Richard Linklater’s ‘New Wave’ Solves All the Usual Biopic Problems

Any black and white film about the making of a French New Wave film doesn’t attract much commercial interest, which is why New wave, Richard Linklaterthe free account of the making of Panting and the emergence of Jean-Luc Godardreceives a minimal theatrical release by Netflix. To its credit, Netflix will at least give considerable sums to esteemed filmmakers to make non-commercial projects. The film is catnip for die-hard movie buffs, as Godard and the French New Wave are North Stars for aspiring movie buffs and filmmakers alike. While it doesn’t have the widest appeal, the final product surprisingly offers a solid solution to the problems of one of our most tired subgenres: the biopic.

Rather than serving as a lesson in cinematic history, New wave shines as a Linklater-approved dating comedy akin to Dazed and confused And Everyone wants it!! In an ingenious move, Linklater neither chronicles Godard’s entire life nor recounts every moment of his life. Panting‘ production. Biopics, especially musical ones, need to take notes and create an immersive world, allowing your subjects to become characters..

“Nouvelle Vague” depicts a specific period in the life of Jean-Luc Godard

2025 by Richard Linklater presents a double program of films about gifted artists at the opposite ends of their careers, with New wave capturing the vibrant dawn of a prodigious talent, while Blue Moon is an elegiac swan song of Lorenz Hartcareer as a lyricist. Linklater is no stranger to methodically tracking people’s evolution, having taken 12 years to craft the greatest coming-of-age story of all time. Childhood and return to a romantic relationship over three decades in the Before trilogy. Biopics about famous and esteemed historical figures like to do the same thing in the compressed time frame of a film, leading to rushed and dramatically inert films that have become the butt of jokes, most notably in the form of parody in Walk Strong: A Dewey Cox Story.

However, the recent release of Springsteen: Deliver me from nowhere shows that this subgenre isn’t going anywhere. The film, starring Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteenhad the good idea of ​​condensing the musician’s writing time for the album, Nebraskabut he felt obliged to serve as a Wikipedia summary. New wave perfects this formula by constraining the narrative within the limits of Godard’s unorthodox production Panting. Unlike overstuffed biopics that attempt to tell a cohesive story about an artist’s entire life, Linklater plunges audiences right into the middle of Godard’s life as a critic of Cinema notebooks and never alludes to the profound influence he will leave on an entire generation of filmmakers. Linklater resists the urge to drop Easter eggs for moviegoers to spot, like Godard’s follow-up films like Live your life And Contempt.

Richard Linklater captured the spirit of the French New Wave in “New Wave”

Youthful spirit was essential to the fabric of the New Wave, so following Godard as he aged and became increasingly disillusioned with the state of cinema would undermine the film’s innate charm. The problem with countless biopics is that they devolve into dour tropes once they reach an artist’s personal and professional nadirs, losing all of the unique charm that made them special. More than reflecting the visual style of the era, Linklater imbued the spirit of the French New Wave.

A French-language film about art house cinema is not an experience for Richard Linklater, a passionate film buff with varied tastes. By far, the premise of New wave This seems academic, but Linklater allows the film to germinate by doing what he does best: creating a period comedy with a band. One would be hard-pressed to find much difference between the French critics and filmmakers who make fun of each other and roam the streets of Paris and the party-loving teenagers of Paris. Dazed and confused kick off their summer. Linklater understands the free artistic spirit of this era by making the medium entirely tactile and invigorating for the audience. You could go out with Godard and François Truffaut all day as they discuss film theory and their love for black Hollywood.

The best thing that can be said about New wave is that it is not necessary to be trained in the world of French cinema to appreciate the film. While a contextual understanding of its cultural significance heightens the film’s dramatic stakes, Richard Linklater’s emphasis on Jean-Luc Godard’s transformation into a character and a contained story appeals to non-cinema audiences. For those who know Panting by heart, you never think about it New wavehistorical implications. Instead, Godard’s character is perfectly reduced to being just an outsider with a dream.

In most biopics, with musical variety being the most glaring culprit, the narrative feels superficial and the contrived recreation of a subject’s life reads like a soulless play intended to boost album sales. We don’t need to know everything that happened in a character’s life: we have the Internet for that. Biographical subjects deserve a unique story or interpretation of their work.

New wave is now available to stream on Netflix in the US