Ethan Hawke talks Godard and grief as ‘Raymond & Ray’ premieres in Toronto

Ethan Hawke on Tuesday praised the late Jean-Luc Godard for transforming cinema, as the actor’s new black comedy Raymond & Ray about coping with grief and death premiered at the Toronto film festival.
Hawke and Ewan McGregor star in the Apple TV+ film about two half-brothers struggling to deal with the loss of their charismatic but abusive father, which had its world premiere at North America’s largest film festival.
The pair spoke to AFP on Tuesday just hours after the news of pioneering French New Wave director Godard’s death broke.
“I think it’s obvious and self-evident that he changed cinema, changed the way people think about the moving image, and how rare that is,” said Hawke.
“Every generation seems to have one or two voices that really penetrate and he was definitely one of them.”
Godard, a legendary maverick who blew up the conventions of cinema in the 1960s with classic films such as Breathless, Contempt and Pierrot le Fou, died by assisted suicide Tuesday at the age of 91, sending cinephiles around the world into mourning.

Appropriately, Hawke described his new film as a “meditation on what is the right way to grieve”.
Raymond and Ray travel to the funeral of their...