What a magnificent, audacious and thrilling work this is from veteran director Jean-Luc Godard. Made in the manner of his Histoire(s) Du Cinema, the film dispenses with narrative and actors and is instead a loosely threaded collage of sounds, texts and images, including shots from Godard’s own features. It’s an intellectually rigorous work that states its intent by beginning with a particularly punishing Scott Walker song from his non-crooner years before treating us to some casual barbarity from Pasolini’s Salo. Themes and motifs do recur, hands, trains (including a shot from Landscapes in the Mist) and there is also a concern with the Holocaust and in one of the film’s chapters (Joyful Arabia) the continuing Western suspicion of the Middle East and its sense of otherness.
Please note: This film contains a sequence of flashing lights which might affect customers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy.
The Image Book divided our Film Podcast Hosts. Listen below from the 9.20 mark…