All language subtitles for Jean-Luc Godard - Allemagne Annee 90 Neuf Zero (1991).en

Can we tell the
story of time?

Of time itself,
in its essence?

No, we cannot.
It would be futile...

A story with the words:
"And so time passed.

Time followed its
course," and so on.

No one in his right mind
would try a narrative.

It would be rather like
attempting to hold...

a single note or a
chord for an hour,

and trying to pass
that off as music.

Is anyone here?

It's not easy, sir.

Now the cold war is over,
being American is pointless.

He left over
ten years ago.

Did you hear that?

See you later.

When philosophy paints
a picture of grey on grey,

life fades.

Gray doesn't
make it younger.

It's barely discernible.

See you later.

Happy non-birthday.

First variation:
THE LAST SPY

Hey!

I had met Elten again,

on my return from the
last Leipzig Festival.

He was writing on
German cinema again,

and he asked me for my
comments, because of...

our days together
at the embassy.

I had some money
left, so I agreed.

But when he mentioned
the man I'd forgotten...

since the conference
in Casablanca,

I didn't believe him.

The Last Spy. It sounded
like a pulp novel.

BUT GERMANY
OH DEAR! GERMANY

purchase TVs,
purchase steel,

purchase cars,
purchase wheels...

Mr Leibnitz...

Yes?

What for?

Destroy...

We're looking for
Mr Witrovsky.

We were told
he worked here.

He's no longer here.

He left three
years ago.

I'm on my own.

Remember...

Solitude is one
and one alone.

By its very nature, it's
a great burden to bear.

Solitude is one.

By its very nature, it's
a great burden to bear.

- Mr Witrovsky!
- What do you want?

Mr Graf! He's
here. It's him.

- Madam needs you.
- I need 20 marks.

Yes, I know.

Always paying,
always suffering.

Not bad, Mr Caution.

Lemmie Caution.

Any good news?

Well, I have.

You've beaten
Sleeping Beauty's record.

I beg your pardon. My
name is Konrad Witrovsky.

Sure...

Count Sellen.

Count Sellen.
Intelligence Service.

A thousand pardons.

Allied Headquarters
lost your file.

I found your name
among my father's papers.

Just think of it.
Thirty years old.

The age of reason,
my friend.

We've seen worse.
It's long and it's short.

Poison Ivy Kid.

That's right.

The Berlin Wall
is long and short.

You have to admit,
Marx did triumph.

How's that?

When an idea is born
among masses,

it becomes a
material force.

That's one way
of looking at it.

Anyway...

That's all over.

What now?

O, THE PAIN... HAS MY
LIFE BEEN A DREAM?

- What now?
- As you like it.

No one's thinking
of you.

Stay with
those ladies.

Who gives a damn
about them?

Go back to the West.

What about you?

I'm back at the radio,
doing translations.

May we never
meet again.

What happened to her?

- What happened to her?
- Enough!

Mimi...

Bring me lunch.

When a person falls in love
his heart soars like a dove...

It doesn't really matter why,
but the sun sparkles in the sky.

For philosophy to make
its stamp on culture,

there must have first occurred
a break with the real world.

Philosophy then reconciles
the corruption...

created by thought.

This reconciliation takes
place in an ideal world,

in the world of the spirit
into which everyone flees...

when the earthly would
no longer satisfy him.

So philosophy...

reconciles the corruption
created by thought.

- Tea, Siegfried?
- Yes. Not too strong.

Thanks.

This takes place within
the realm of the mind...

when the real world
no longer satisfies us.

Philosophy begins by
destruction in the real world.

It's thus for all people,
so to speak.

Philosophy only
comes to the surface...

when life in society
no longer satisfies us.

And it ceases to
interest the masses...

when citizens can
no longer take part...

in the running
of the state.

"Men make history by
pursuing their interests.

They are at the same time
the tools and the means...

of achieving something
higher and more vast...

that they are not aware of,
but perceive unconsciously. "

But... In French
we would use mais.

Something higher
and more vast...

but which they perceive
unconsciously.

Reason's trick...

is to use non-reason to
get ahead in the world.

Reason's trick is to
use non-reason...

I think "folly"
would be better...

in order to manifest
itself in the world.

History is beyond
good and evil.

That's where
I'm up to.

History is beyond
good and evil,

and the things
of everyday life.

Bliss is not to be found
in world history.

Periods of happiness are
only its blank pages.

Is not the narrator in
an untenable situation,

even more difficult
and lonely now,

than it was previously?

A STORY OF SOLITUDE
I think he is.

Yet he must be there,
absent and present,

oscillating between
two uncertain truths,

that of the document
and that of the fiction.

Your piece of history,
only 10 pfennig.

Pieces of Berlin Wall,
belts, books, flags,

1939- 1945
Gestapo Prison

Antifascists were inhumanly
tortured in this inferno.

That's from Oranienburg.

This is from Dachau,

and I found this
in the Dora camp.

That's where they
made the V1's.

That book belongs to me.

I'm Dora,

WOE IS ME

but that was yesterday.

WHERE HAVE THE
YEARS GONE?

Yesterday my name
was Dora.

Today I'm already
Lotte Kestner.

And I have to work
with Mr. Goethe.

Well, are you coming?

Second variation
CHARLOTTE IN WEIMAR

Come, ladies
and gentlemen.

Take your pick.

This is where Friedrich
Schiller wrote "The Robbers".

"The Robbers. "

It's always been
part of my life.

Liszt tried teaching Lola Montez
to play the piano here.

Without much success,
however.

It's Martine Carole's fault.

DO NOT HARM YOURSELF
WE ARE STILL HERE

Lucas Cranach the Elder
lived here from 1552 to 1553.

It was a great day for Weimar
when the Red Army...

took over the city.

Come now.

Let's go.

I'M A POET AND CAN'T HELP IT
The soldiers salute the artists.

Endless dreams
in the silence,

to which we poets submit
as we do to superstitions...

EVERYTHING TO ME IS
RAPTURE AND TORTURE

in accordance with
our souls.

One thing was clear
for Goethe.

Different shades of darkness
can never produce light.

ALAS, TWO SOULS LIVE
WITHIN MY BREAST

One thing was clear
for Goethe.

White is not an
intermediate colour...

between other colours.

Eternal silence...

and these countless
volumes terrify me.

A frightening image.

Where are you, Faust?
I heard your voice.

It came to me
with all its force.

Yes.

It's me.

I am Faust.

We are alike.

regardez, monsieur Kafka est
dans la jardin avec une amie

Look, Franz has
come to see us.

Everyone says it's Marianne
Kirchner. That isn't so.

It too is me. The day
before yesterday.

Tomorrow I shall be...

Greta, Frieda,
Anna, Lola,

Claudia, Marushka,
Alexandra, Vivette,

Gisele... Enough.

GIRLS WITHOUT UNIFORMS

Anna, Magdalena.

What about you,
Delphine...

Do you hold anything
against Germany?

I accuse the East's leaders...

of having spent
their life in Dachau.

And the West's leaders
of saying Mass as if...

they were at the market.

The Mass...

I also accuse Germany...

of accusing everyone
else of failure.

It is difficult to
blame a people...

for deviating
in the ways...

that God has set
out for them.

The ways God
set out for them.

Beneath these sad
appearances I feel nothing.

Like artificial
four-leaf clovers...

TOWARDS SPEECH

which you place on
hotel breakfast tables.

Germany during the war...

TOWARDS SPEECH

There is only
one Germany.

Hate the work
for five years...

and you will reign
over souls...

fecundated by poetry
and music.

Oh, Germany!

Rosy down,
I hear it sing,

My early death
you shall bring.

Soon the trumpets
will resound,

and I'll be buried
in the ground.

DEATH'S DEATH

Between German peace
and German war...

- Which one's better,
love or money? - Both.

There is not...

as between French
peace and French war,

a difference of essence
but only of degree.

War changes neither our
souls nor our customs.

From 1914 to 1918 and
from 1939 to 1945,

German wives were not
that much more unfaithful.

He said not to see or
love you any more.

- Easily said...
- The emperor...

And stamp collectors
kept at it during air raids.

Passion is an integral
part of the German psyche,

more so than reason.

DEATH AND
TRANSFIGURATION

Grimmelshausen
Adventurons Simplicissimus

This God of Nature
speaks with us,

educates us and
gives himself to us.

And if we make our
beloved into such a divinity,

DEATH AND
TRANSFIGURATION

then this is putting
religion into practice.

THE END OF GERMANY

THE DRAGONS

IN OUR LIVES

Third Variation
ALL DRAGONS IN OUR LIVES

The dragons in our lives...

are only princesses
who are waiting...

to see us become
handsome and brave.

- Hello, baby. Here I am.
- It's you!

- I dropped by for a drink.
- You'll regret your prank.

- Why are you here?
- I followed your perfume.

Do you think I'm stupid?

Are you sure you
came to tell me that?

Ask him.

Maybe all the dragons in
our lives are princesses,

who are waiting to see us
become handsome and brave.

All the terrifying things...

are perhaps things
we can't change,

that are waiting
to be changed.

FROM THE DEPTHS
I CALLED

Suddenly I thought
it was Mozart's birthday.

ROADS

THAT LEAD...

NOWHERE

TOPOGRAPHY OF TERROR

Senses or feelings?

I don't know.
Feelings of anger.

Despair, I think.

In the eyes of the West...

The senses...

Those faithful servants
of the passions.

Winter was on its way.

My research on the effect
of Fascism on young English...

writers was coming
to an end.

Like my friend
Christopher Isherwood,

I also decided to say
goodbye to Berlin.

But Elten asked
me to stay on.

His work wasn't
progressing.

In fact he forgot
to tell me...

WOE IS ME MY LIFE
HAS BEEN BUT A DREAM

he was in love with the woman
I'd met at the paper, by chance.

And again, by chance,
three days later...

on Tiergarten Bridge...

where they disposed of
Rosa Luxemburg's body.

She muttered something...

To lose oneself or
to become detached.

I kept listening.
It's my job.

Losing yourself literally
means to become detached.

Se perdre,
sich verlieren...

A LONELY STORY

means to become detached.
Become detached...

And quietly escape.

I saw them three
weeks later,

in the underground.

We speak, and speak
about language.

That we're speaking about
language is self-evident.

Is it right to translate
Sprache by "word"?

No.

Why say music only exists
in lifts and supermarkets?

Because music
has been murdered.

Yes, the Americans.

It was a drunken American
soldier who killed Webern.

I didn't know that.

The US never understood
the war, or took part in it.

At best, their fight was
not the state's fight,

THE END OF GERMANY

nor on the same
battleground.

The US can only
imagine a civil war.

It's always themselves
and their own defects,

personified by the enemy,
that they combat in all wars.

For them, war is
a moral dilemma.

When they were English,
they fought the English.

When they became Americans,
they fought Americans.

Once sufficiently influenced
by the Germans,

morally and culturally,

they attacked the Germans.

Look, a factory church.

The first American to take a
prisoner in 1917 was Meyer.

The prisoner's name
was also Meyer.

A sombre, serious current,
flowing not from life...

but from mere existence.

To think of their reality
as they saw it...

made your heart sink.

But of all who
passed by,

none seemed so pitiful in
her unthinking patience...

as the girl standing
in front of me.

None was harder
to understand.

Who am I?

LONG GOODBYE

The lucky ones...

That's what I call anyone
who's not over 25...

because they don't
know they're lucky.

At border crossings,

they don't hear people
multiply the contents...

of their wallet by
hundreds or thousands,

as if they were children.

When they see someone
from a famine-stricken area,

they don't think,

"This person has fought
a child for food. "

THE SOLITUDE OF HISTORY

So the day I see a world
with its strength restored...

links the words
"Russia" and "Joy",

like fastening a belt,
I will gladly die.

THE PERFECT

UNION

Don't forget, there's a difference
between narrative and music.

OF SEVERAL VOICES

A piece entitled "Five Minute
Waltz" lasts five minutes.

PREVENTS

This is its sole
relationship to time.

IN THE LONG RUN

But the story of a
five-minute event...

could be stretched
a thousand times...

if those five minutes were filled
with exceptional awareness.

Or it may seem
very short...

although it's much longer
than the imaginary duration.

THE MOVEMENT
OF ONE

The East has understood
this, but not the West.

TOWARDS THE OTHER

Hello, Mr. Courbet.

Comrade... Which way
is the West, please?

ART OF THE FUGUE
During this fugue...

where the name of Bach
appears contrapuntally,

is when the composer died.

But Dimitri, I'm working.

She said,
"Tomorrow my angel,"

"over there, beyond
the horizon... "

He said,
"Tomorrow my angel,"

"over there, beyond
the horizon,"

"under the tree
laden with oranges,"

"our lips will meet... "

He's saying
goodbye, Miss.

Say something, Miss.

Do something.

Dimitri's last sonata.

Opus 147.

O WOE IS ME! WHERE
HAVE THE YEARS GONE?

Comrade, which way
is the West, please?

I don't understand,
comrade.

Farewell, space
of all spaces.

For the last time, my
gaze contemplates...

Fourth Variation
A RUSSIAN SMILE

the reflection of your lively
grace and your splendid pride.

A TIME FOR CONTEMPT

There is a whisper
from every continent...

rising up against
the Soviet Union.

I didn't feel comfortable
in that atmosphere.

The Komintern had
changed since 1923.

As for me, I was no
longer the young man...

who had charged
at police blockages...

and fought behind
the barricades...

with a rifle
at the ready.

For me, the little F�hrer
was more important...

than Josef Stalin
and the revolution.

But Kurt is still alive.

I only had a little
work to do.

He rummages in garbage
bins looking for bottles.

"Three times a week... "

"I used to meet a courier
from the Hamburg Gestapo. "

German Navy ships,
currently near Crete,

will help search for
mines in the Persian Gulf.

"He gave me small doses
of false information... "

about European
industry and defence...

under surveillance by
the Soviet secret police.

Jan Valtin, Without
Fatherland or Frontier

"His information was
to satisfy the Gestapo... "

"without compromising
Soviet interests. "

"In pursuing their own
interests, men make history. "

"At the same time, they are
the tools and the means... "

"for something higher and
greater without realising it. "

"But they sense it
subconsciously. "

A LONELY STORY

What's amazing is that
in the German language...

you find, more
than any other,

phrases to express
deception.

And they mostly have
triumphant overtones.

Maybe because the language
is considered difficult.

This time it really
was Dora.

The first dream indicated her
detachment from her beloved,

and her return
to her father,

WHERE IT WAS
THERE I SHALL BE

that is, her flight from
life, into illness.

This second dream
actually announced...

that she would break
away from her father,

and be won over
again to life.

HOPE

How degenerate a
people's tastes must be,

bowing to dignitaries
with their pompous display.

DECLINE

ON THE MARCH

They confuse
plain and bad.

They confuse
plain and bad.

- Nietzsche.
- No, Madame de Stael.

All these painters
only served the state.

GERMANY
YEAR ZERO

They were hypocrites.
They only painted...

what they were told to.

Consider Velasquez.
Nothing but official art.

Giotto. Purely official art.

- Always.
- What about this?

IF I CAN'T MOVE HEAVEN
I WILL SHAKE HELL

Like the awesome D�rer,

precursor and
predecessor of Nazism,

who put nature
on his canvas...

and killed it.

And this?

I'd like to give history back
to those who have none.

A LONELY STORY

- Germany can never go under.
- Another way of seeing Germany.

MAGIC LANTERN

Remember Ernst
von Salomon?

Come at midnight.
Come at one.

The old man and old woman
are asleep. I sleep alone.

There's a knock at
the door. Answer it.

The old man and the old
woman think it's the wind.

A DEFA DOCUMENTARY

- I have to be off.
- And your spy?

He rang to ask me to
help him across the Wall.

I don't understand.

There's not a
single bit left.

Is the West this way
or that way?

I don't understand.

THE LAST DEFA DOCO

...of the buildings, the
stage sets, the team...

- Hey, it's Marie-Louise!
- of the photographers...

Go home!

What's this about?

Don't speak thus of
Napoleon's drummer boy...

when they carried their country
on the soles of their shoes.

The West, for God's sake!

I still feel today a
nostalgia for Babelsberg.

I just hope...

that you'll have the success
that you deserve.

May we meet again.
I'll be thinking of you.

TRHE VERY LAST
DEFA DOCO

I always wondered
whether, in the afterlife,

there is still music.

Yes, Mr Caution.
There's afterlife music.

WHERE IT WAS
I SHALL BE

They will say...

When the Democratic Republic
crushed the poor...

Fifth Variation
THE NON-WAILING WALL

They won't say it.

They'll say...

"Just before the great
wars broke out... "

They won't say, "When women
went into the bedroom. "

They'll say, "When great powers
united against the poor. "

In my opinion, sir,

Brecht cannot be
staged like that.

Yes, I'm afraid
it's over that way,

the West.

Goodbye, Mr Caution.

Woe is me.

Where can...

flowers be found...

in winter?

THE DECLINE OF THE
WESTERN WORLD

As soon as I crossed
the border,

I met the ghosts.

O my country,
is it really true?

This is how I imagined
you for so long.

A happy land.
Magical, stunning...

O beloved country,
where can you be?

THE SOLITUDE
OF HISTORY

Sixth Variation
DECLINE OF THE WEST

THE END OF GERMANY

The shops are full
of incredible rubbish.

But what you really need
can't be found any more.

ON WEEPING
AND LAMENTING

Something the girl said...

about the light that
is always turned on...

made me think of
another girl in '43...

What's it, Sophie?

- What's it, Sophie?
- This way the light stays on.

She was decapitated
with an axe.

She and her brother,

because they'd put up
posters all over Munich,

all saying the
same thing.

"Hans and Sophie Scholl. "

"The dream of the state
is to be alone. "

"The dream of individuals
is to be together. "

CATEGORICAL
IMPERATIVE

The ghosts had
vanished...

and I hadn't found
the Poison Ivy Kid,

nor Letitia de Malreich,

nor the heiress of
the Begum millions.

Even Philips globes...

could no longer light
the streets of Karlgr�ne...

with the brilliance of
the lights of Karlheim.

A STORY OF
SOLITUDE

And yet the humblest of men
was still doing his duty.

No less titanic is the
assault of money...

against spiritual power.

A desperate struggle
is now underway...

on the soil of the
cities of the world,

where money can
arise victorious.

A STATE AND
ITS VARIATOINS

But, since money is a way
of thinking, it destroys...

itself once it has thought
economics through to the end.

Then it invents Auschwitz
and Hiroshima.

BLEED THEM DRY

And so begins
the final struggle.

The struggle between
money and blood.

My suitcase, please.

Miss!

Miss!

Put this under the mattress.
It's for my feet.

Miss!

THE ORIGIN AND PLACE
OF THE GERMANS

So you've chosen
freedom too.

Work makes you free.

You don't need
to do the room.

Somebody forgot this.

No, sir. It's the Bible.
There's one in every room.

Goodbye.

Bastards!