Dir.
Jean Luc Godard, 2004, France/Switzerland, 80 min
Cast:
Sarah Adler, Nade Dieu
Over a career spanning five decades, Jean-Luc Godard has constantly explored and questioned the function of cinema, and his pervasive influence has shaped the style of filmmakers as diverse as Martin Scorsese, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wong Kar-Wai. However, despite his prolific output, it will always be a string of New Wave experiments from the early sixties (Breathless to Pierrot Le Fou) for which he will be most fondly remembered. From the late sixties onwards, his canon had become largely political in its concerns and avant garde in its execution, often wilfully opaque and difficult, always fragmentary and dazzling.
Notre Musique encapsulates all that is brilliant and frustrating about Godard's late work. Dense with ideas, often absurd and self indulgent, but unusually touching, the film is broken up into three very defined sections - or 'Kingdoms' as they are referred to by the on-screen subtitles. The first kingdom is that of Hell and constitutes an intense ten-minute montage of war throughout the ages - the devastation, the machinery and the victims. Archive footage from newsreels, documentaries and fiction films (including Fort Apache, Apocalypse Now and Zulu) combine to create a kaleidoscopic effect where the bleakness of the content runs alongside the exhilaration of the execution. Godard seems to be meditating on the inevitability of conflict throughout history and the innate violence of successive generations.
The second kingdom is that of 'Purgatory' and makes up the main body of the film. Set in modern day Sarajevo , this section features a mix of real and fictional characters (including Godard himself) who are attending a literary convention as part of the city's regeneration. As various characters crisscross the battle-scarred, but defiantly alive Sarajevo , we hear fragmentary discourse on the effects of war, past and present, from the crimes of the Nazis to the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Two female characters emerge and begin to mirror each other: Judith, a young Israeli journalist, thanks the French ambassador who sheltered her grandparents during the Nazi occupation and dreams of a way to bring peace to the middle east; while Olga, a Jewish French film student, represents a less hopeful view and considers suicide. Embedded into this section is the slyly comic and self-depreciating scene in which Godard gives a seminar to a largely uninterested class of film students. Looking as much a stereotype of the grizzled French intellectual as Woody Allen is of the New York Jewish neurotic, Godard's seminar is fascinating in its juxtaposition of ideas: he discusses - amongst many other things - classical Hollywood screen grammar (shot/reverse shot), text versus image, and claims Hungary's 6-3 victory over England at Wembley in 1953 was the last truly socialist act because they played as a team while the English played individually.
Such scatter-shot logic will undoubtedly frustrate certain viewers, yet it sums up a familiar duality that is central to Godard's technique. Semi-fictional scenes play out next to subtle history lessons; anti-realist strategies co-exist with documentary footage at its most raw and thoughtful. A good example would be when Judith visits Mostar Bridge , destroyed by Croat artillery during the Bosnian war. In voice-over, we hear of the ambitious plan to reconstruct the ancient bridge from the original stones, recovered from the river and painstakingly restored. Judith sits on the rocks and takes photos, and then has a vision of two Native Americans in full tribal dress, standing by the bridge. Godard encourages us to reflect on the desire and impossibility to recreate the past, and questions whether - after such violent trauma - anything can ever be the same again.
The final kingdom is that of Heaven and acts as a dream-like coda for the film. Olga wanders through a sun-dappled garden of Eden on the banks of a beautiful lake, where young people read books and play games. The mood of tranquillity and peacefulness is undercut, however, by a typically sardonic Godardian touch: this heavenly paradise is in fact surrounded by a fence and guarded by armed US marines.
So, as always, Godard gives us no easy answers, and invites us to construct our own meanings and connections. While the tone is primarily cerebral, an elusive air of optimism emerges (embodied by the way he shoots Sarajevo - a fascinating archive for the future.). Ideologies are wilfully blurred, and concepts tumble over each other for our attention. He wants us to work, to actively question the images we are presented with. How willing the viewer is to do this will determine their enjoyment of this at times difficult, but ultimately rewarding film.
Gus Alvarez
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