Review of Hail Mary (1985) by Michael H — 05 Feb 2008

An awesomely deep film, denounced by the Vatican because they probably didn't understand it. The way I see it, Mary is used as a springboard to explore the great confusion that is our own existance...did we come from God, or a random accident? Immaculate conception might seem crazy to an atheist, but the irony is that to adopt the belief that life "just happened" is to believe in the same idea.

What Godard does here, for me, is to show the parallels between both atheism and belief, shows (as usual) more affinities than disagreements, and by presenting Mary as a modern day character, allows her mythical story to take on personal significance in our lives. She wrestles with her body trying to understand the miracle within, just as we wrestle with ideas, philosophy, religion, etc. to understand our own miracle. To "hail" Mary is to hail the question, a question that Godard of course doesn't answer but poses brilliantly through evocative imagary and skillful retelling of the Virgin Mary story as our own.