Notre Musique (2004)
Country: FR/SW
Technical: col 79m
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Cast: Sarah Adler, Nade Dieu, Jean-Christophe Bouvet, Rony Kramer, Jean-Luc Godard
Synopsis:
A film in three chapters, or 'kingdoms', of which the central one, 'Purgatory', is the most substantial. The 'prologue', 'Hell', is a montage of inhumanity and the 'epilogue', 'Paradise', a doubtful Eden in which characters wander, apparently fenced in, and guarded by US marines. The narrative, such as it is, that occupies the bulk of the film concerns a filmmaker arriving in Sarajevo after the Balkan war to give a lecture at the European literary conference there, and two young Jewish women, one of whom seeks out the French ambassador to confront him with the fact that he saved her family during the war, and the other of whom contemplates suicide.
Review:
A typically discursive, formless exercise, for all its apparent formalism (tripartite structure, titles). The director continues to be preoccupied with language and text, lengthy sections of the film being given over to laborious relaying by interpreters, and at one point draws an analogy between cinematic shot-reverse shot grammar and lived events. It's fun to see Godard in his own film - he doesn't do badly at all - and there is some food for thought here; the trouble is one does not have time to think before the next aphoristic observation hoves into view.
Country: FR/SW
Technical: col 79m
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Cast: Sarah Adler, Nade Dieu, Jean-Christophe Bouvet, Rony Kramer, Jean-Luc Godard
Synopsis:
A film in three chapters, or 'kingdoms', of which the central one, 'Purgatory', is the most substantial. The 'prologue', 'Hell', is a montage of inhumanity and the 'epilogue', 'Paradise', a doubtful Eden in which characters wander, apparently fenced in, and guarded by US marines. The narrative, such as it is, that occupies the bulk of the film concerns a filmmaker arriving in Sarajevo after the Balkan war to give a lecture at the European literary conference there, and two young Jewish women, one of whom seeks out the French ambassador to confront him with the fact that he saved her family during the war, and the other of whom contemplates suicide.
Review:
A typically discursive, formless exercise, for all its apparent formalism (tripartite structure, titles). The director continues to be preoccupied with language and text, lengthy sections of the film being given over to laborious relaying by interpreters, and at one point draws an analogy between cinematic shot-reverse shot grammar and lived events. It's fun to see Godard in his own film - he doesn't do badly at all - and there is some food for thought here; the trouble is one does not have time to think before the next aphoristic observation hoves into view.
Country: FR/SW
Technical: col 79m
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Cast: Sarah Adler, Nade Dieu, Jean-Christophe Bouvet, Rony Kramer, Jean-Luc Godard
Synopsis:
A film in three chapters, or 'kingdoms', of which the central one, 'Purgatory', is the most substantial. The 'prologue', 'Hell', is a montage of inhumanity and the 'epilogue', 'Paradise', a doubtful Eden in which characters wander, apparently fenced in, and guarded by US marines. The narrative, such as it is, that occupies the bulk of the film concerns a filmmaker arriving in Sarajevo after the Balkan war to give a lecture at the European literary conference there, and two young Jewish women, one of whom seeks out the French ambassador to confront him with the fact that he saved her family during the war, and the other of whom contemplates suicide.
Review:
A typically discursive, formless exercise, for all its apparent formalism (tripartite structure, titles). The director continues to be preoccupied with language and text, lengthy sections of the film being given over to laborious relaying by interpreters, and at one point draws an analogy between cinematic shot-reverse shot grammar and lived events. It's fun to see Godard in his own film - he doesn't do badly at all - and there is some food for thought here; the trouble is one does not have time to think before the next aphoristic observation hoves into view.