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By PAUL BRENNER
To many film critics, one of
the big surprises at the 2004 New York Film
Festival was a film heralded as the return of a
master -- Jean-luc Godard's "Notre Musique." But
Godard never returned because he never went away;
only now, perhaps, after many years, critics are
finally beginning to catch up with him.
"Notre Musique" is a dense, cerebral film essay,
structured upon Dante's Divine Comedy. The first
section, "Hell," is a disturbing montage of images
of the horrors of war -- both real and mythical
(film clips of old Hollywood films).
Section Two, "Purgatory," takes place in Sarajevo,
a recent real life version of Hell. In this
section, Godard makes an appearance as himself but
in a different incarnation than he has in past
films. Instead of the stupefied Uncle Jean of
"First Name: Carmen" or the Lewisian filmmaker of
"Keep Up Your Right," in "Notre Musique" Godard
appears as The Patriarch of the Intellect, lording
it over a rapt crowd of students at a literature
conference. At the conference, as Godard
pontificates, he encounters a Spanish author, a
Palestinian poet, and Native American activists.
The section ends in Godard's garden back home,
answering his phone after beaning himself in the
head, finding out that the niece of his translator
at the conference has been killed after
threatening to blow up a movie theater.
In the virtually silent final section, "Heaven," a
woman roams a celestial arboreal dell, American
military standing guard over what could be the
gates of heaven.
In this intensely moving film, Godard rejects film
and communication and calls for new forms of
expression. For Godard, all the present cultural
forms are inadequate to encompass the horrors the
world has experienced. In this age of high
technology, communication is as parsed and
divorced as feudal fiefdoms. As illustration, the
film is a veritable Tower of Babel as characters
try to communicate through different languages and
failing miserably. At one point a woman remarks,
"If anyone understands me, then I wasn't clear."
In a sense, "Notre Musique" is stifling in its
hermetically sealed bleakness
-- the only forms of communication mankind
understands are murder and war.
Which is why, at the end, Godard offers a glimmer
of hope, but only if new forms of human connection
and communication are found: "The principle of
cinema is to go towards the light and shine it on
our night, our music."
"Notre Musique" is a difficult but rewarding film
that requires multiple viewings to appreciate and
digest. But Godard's complexities are to be
cherished in this dumbed-down world of ours. There
is no other filmmaker who is as focused and
single-minded to courageously follow his thesis
out to the end. Rather than capitulate and the
easy way out, Godard, at 75, is the youngest
filmmaker at work today.
Godard's cries out for a new way of seeing, a new
paradigm. A new outlook that will change the
world: "Try to see. Try to imagine. In the first
case you say, "Look at that." In the second you
say, "Close your eyes."
This Wellspring video release includes an essay by
Godard scholar David Sterritt, the trailer for the
film and a trailer gallery of other Wellspring
releases. |
