Last night we got to see a newly restored 35mm print of Godard's Pierrot le fou on the big screen, thanks to the good folks at the Wexner Center for the Arts. This was especially exciting because the criterion edition won't be released until February 19th, 2008 -- in other words, it is not available for renting, unless you want to watch a pan-and-scan video copy, which would, of course, be sacrilege.

It's hard to describe the magnitude of how tickled I was throughout the screening. It was so, so exciting. Caitlin described it afterwards as a cinematic pop-up book, which to my mind is a perfect way to describe it: explosive, frenetic, and passionate beyond measure.

You could watch this film a hundred dozen times, each time specifically watching for a different element -- color, composition, structure, character, costume, politics, psychology, literature, consumerism, capitalism, anarchism, the return to the state of nature, animal rights, ethnocentrism, love, loyalty, death, art, torture, Americanism, Vietnam, Algeria, fireworks, etc. etc. etc. -- and you would still have cause to watch it another hundred dozen times. Here is a filmmaker truly at his prime, whose imagination is at least five times that of all other filmmakers combined.

Put the dvd release date on your calendar and treat yourself come February.