Sympathy for the Devil

The Rolling Stones are shown inside London's Olympic Studios, recording and re-recording guitar, bass, and vocal parts for Sympathy for the Devil. Long uninterrupted takes capture the band's dynamic, while the atmosphere hints at internal tensions, including the looming dissolution of Brian Jones. The sequences emphasize the studio as a microcosm of 1960s rock and political upheaval.

A line about the killing of John F. Kennedy is heard early in the film and is later revised after Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in June 1968, underscoring the era's shocks. The adjustment marks the film's sensitivity to real-world events rather than just studio fiction. The timing anchors the movie in the volatile year of 1968.

Interwoven with the intimate studio footage are images and references to the chaotic politics of 1968. The film juxtaposes music-making with social upheaval, signaling that art and politics are entangled. The montage suggests that current events bleed into popular culture.

Outdoor shots depict Black Panthers in a junkyard, reading revolutionary texts and passing rifles from hand to hand. The setting emphasizes militarized protest and a sense of imminent confrontation. The image anchors the film's critique of power, race, and revolution.

A group of white women dressed in white are kidnapped, brutalized, and shot off-camera; their bloody bodies later appear in recurring tableaus. The sequence shocks the viewer and underscores the film's fearless confrontation with violence and oppression. The scene functions as a stark reminder of systemic brutality.

A persistent voiceover delivers a political thesis on Marxism, revolution, and the director's interests, framing the narrative as a meditation on ideology. The commentary stands in contrast to the on-screen violence and pop-cultural imagery. The voiceover ties the film's aesthetic to its political aims.

A camera crew follows a woman in a yellow peasant dress as she is asked questions and answers 'yes' or 'no', symbolically representing democracy. The scene locates political commentary in a personal, almost documentary-style observation. The chapter heading invites viewers to reflect on democracy as performative.

The ongoing series of questions and binary responses further develops the Eve Democracy motif, turning everyday dialogue into a political allegory. The shots linger on the woman and the camera, blurring the line between cinema and political discourse. The sequence reinforces the film's meta-cinematic approach.

A lengthy indoor sequence centers on a pornographic bookstore that also sells political and military pamphlets. Customers exchange purchases for documents, then slap Maoist hostages beside a book display. The owner reads from Mein Kampf, complicating the film's meditation on media, propaganda, and power.

A small child is brought into the bookstore to buy a pamphlet and joins in slapping the hostages. This shocking moment deepens the film's critique of how ideology and violence permeate ordinary life. The scene underscores the commodification of propaganda and the normalization of cruelty.

After each purchase, customers raise their right arms in a Nazi salute, encapsulating the film's unsettling collage of fascist imagery and revolutionary rhetoric. The juxtaposition highlights Godard's critique of ideological performativity. The bookstore scene sits alongside other surrealist tableaux in the film.

In the last sequence, a camera crane dominates the shore as a second woman in white lies on the crane's end, motionless high above the beach. A fellow on the sand asks 'What are they doing over there?', and the reply 'I think they're shooting a movie' blurs cinema with the film's own creation. The ending reinforces the meta-cinematic meditation on representation and spectacle.