Can great art be made without human genius and all its flaws? It’s a vital question at a time when artificial intelligence threatens to subsume Hollywood.
Through new movies Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon, director Richard Linklater offers an answer − delving into the lives of two brilliant, volatile men whose films and plays shaped French New Wave cinema and Broadway.
His conclusion?
“AI is not going to make a film,” the US indie auteur says.
“Storytelling, narrative, characters? Something that connects to humanity? That’s a whole ‘nother thing,” says the Texan whose notable films include Boyhood, the Before trilogy, School of Rock and Hit Man.
Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, streaming on Netflix from November 14, charts how young French director Jean-Luc Godard defied all film-making convention to create his 1960 classic Breathless.
It captures the swagger, charisma and impulsiveness with which Godard convinced financial backers and Hollywood starlet Jean Seberg to make a debut feature that had neither a script nor a workable filming schedule.
“He’s a little full of s***, but he’s a genius. A revolution is going on, but he’s the only one who knows it,” Linklater says of Godard, an icon of cinema’s French New Wave movement in the late 1950s and 60s.
By contrast, Blue Moon – released in cinemas − depicts Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart at the end of his career.
With composer Richard Rodgers, Hart wrote classic songs like The Lady is a Tramp, My Funny Valentine and, of course, Blue Moon.
But the film captures a single evening, in which it becomes clear Rodgers has moved on to even greater success with new partner Oscar Hammerstein II, with the debut of their hit musical Oklahoma!
Within months, Hart will be dead from alcoholism.
“It’s become very clear that the times are leaving him behind. They’re leaving behind his genius,” Linklater says.
‘No algorithm is gonna do that’
Which brings us back to the question of human genius and art.
For Linklater, AI is “just one more tool” that artists can use, but it “doesn’t have intuitions or consciousness”.
“I think it’s going to be less revolutionary than everybody thinks in the next few years,” he said in an interview ahead of the Los Angeles premiere of Nouvelle Vague at The American French Film Festival (TAFFF).
The French New Wave’s trademark documentary-style realism was made possible in part by technology − the arrival of cheap, light, portable cameras.
“AI is just one more tool that artists can use, but it doesn’t have intuitions or consciousness”
But Linklater rejects the claim that the cost savings and flexibility offered by AI could unleash another film-making revolution.
“You’re gonna see some cool stuff,” he concedes.
But “the hardest thing to do is still to tell a compelling story that people want to see and be engaged with,” he says.
“That’s a lot of points you have to hit − that’s acting, that’s story structure, that’s pace, style.
“No algorithm is gonna do that. No prompt is gonna do that.”
‘Authentic’
Among Linklater’s future projects is Merrily We Roll Again, adapted from Stephen Sondheim’s musical.
Set over two decades, Merrily charts the demise of a friendship between three artists, and is told in reverse chronology.
As if to prove his point about technology, Linklater has decided to shoot the film over a 20-year span, allowing the actors to truly age backward on screen.
It is a more complex variation of his Oscar-winning Boyhood − which he filmed across 12 years.
Of course, AI has recently been used to “de-age” actors, like in Tom Hanks’s 2024 film Here. But Linklater has little interest.
“It’s not a visual trick, you know? I really want an actor of a certain age to be playing a character,” he explains.
Asking a 25-year-old to play a 45-year-old is “not authentic” because young people “don’t know what that even means,” he says.
“I want the actors to be that much older and wiser.”
So, don’t expect to see Merrily in theatres any time soon.
“That’s my hanging-on-to-humanity approach!” chuckles Linklater.
