The Image Book

My immediate reaction to this film was: a modern, edgy and less focused film comprable to Tarkovsky's "The Mirror."

I genuinely don't know what to rate this film. I'm pretty indifferent towards it. Throughout watching, I noticed my mind regularly wandering, and, unlike how I normally respond to that observation, I let it continue to happen. I feel like Godard would appreciate that because, at the end of the day, isn't that what film is? Visual and sonic stimulus that leads to inward thought? With allowing myself to drift came a meditative quality. The difference with this film is that inward thought inspired by the screen was incredibly immediate but far less direct. I say it's indirect because there doesn't seem to be any complete or clear idea throughout the film that I could have used to inwardly springboard off of.

Like the film, this review doesn't seem grounded in much concrete thought, and I think that's an appropriate response to have. That sounds like a negative statement but it truly isn't. The whole thing felt like an unabashed visual stream of consciousness into Godard's various woes with the world in which meaning can be more drawn from the form than the substance. It was a unique experience to say the least.

To be brief: With regard to Jean-Luc Godard's later work, what you get out of it depends entirely on what you bring to it and expect from it. "Goodbye to Language" nauseates me; I think it's unbearably pretentious, poorly constructed, and struggling for meaning. But I had some modicum of fun with "The Image Book." Granted, it's still montages layered on montages on montages, so it's dense, but it's still good, academic fun.

Nowhere else but in late-era Godard can you find a reference to the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge scene from "Vertigo" moments after a shocking ISIS execution video. Godard lost none of his edge as a filmmaker, for better and for worse, and "The Image Book" proves he's retained his ability to shock and inspire audiences.

The editing and voiceover are precise and hyperaware, with more wit and levity than "Goodbye to Language" brought, and the references are deeper-cut as well. I enjoyed the throwaway cut to "Kiss Me Deadly" as much as I loved his allusion to Buster Keaton. But at the end of the day, Godard's latest is simply too abstract, too formless, too high-brow to recommend to anybody. As much fun as I had, it went on for too long and had more non-endings than "Return of the King." There's a solid four or five minutes of film after the credits, as if Godard is begging us to leave the theater as he's laughing in our faces.

But if you approach "Goodbye to Language" not only prepared but enthusiastic about what the director has to offer next, as I know many people were, you may well walk out of "The Image Book" claiming it's a masterpiece.

For years Jean-Luc Godard has been reducing his cinema to increasingly symbolic and minimalist layers. If in the 70s and 80s, his work already called attention to an "absence of script", which in fact was a text with broad lines that played for the improvisation on the scene in the following decades until the work of the actors began to be kept to a minimum.

His films today are like collages of history and reflections on the subjects to which he have more interest: history and cinema. And the parallelism that one has with the other.

The prolific director's newest work, "The Image Book" is the apex of his cinema of symbolism and collage. There are no actors. At most Godard's cavernous voice, today with 88, narrating the film is making reflections on the twentieth century, the new century, humanity, society, and, of course, the cinema.

For Godard, cinema is the book of images of the twentieth century. Just as the Bible, the Koran and other religious texts are the basis for life in society and tell the story within their respective religions, cinema is the documentation of the history of modernity and contemporaneity.

Through "The Image Book" Godard invites us to reflect on history. And it builds a journey through the twentieth century in an incessant collage of images and sounds that permeate the history of art in its most different forms. All divided into five acts, as five are the fingers of the hands, as five are the senses. Five is a number that runs through the entire film, as well as the metaphor around the hands and their symbolic meanings in each attitude.

It is through this metaphor of the hands that Godard draws attention to a history constructed by the signs of body language. They are the hands used for love, but they also bring disappointment in the first act, the hands used for the violence of the second act or the hands that legitimize the use of force by the spirit of the laws of the fourth act.

The first part of the film is a set of reflections of what Godard had already somehow talked about in other works like "Film Socialism" (2010) or "Forever Mozart" (1996).

The last part is that it brings a Godard with a look at the Middle East rarely, or perhaps never before, shown so deeply. From a play on words stating that "Sheherazade would have told a different story in 1001 days," and not nights like the traditional story, Godard displays the bankruptcy of the west's gaze over the east.

For him, we see the Orient as a unique cultural mass, and not as if each country had its own culture and worldview. In the same way that we look to the east as the mirror of what we are not. And this is reflected in the way the cinema portrays the Orient. It is when the hands arise in delicate movements, painted with symbols that we do not understand or hold tightly the Koran in his prayer.

In a more controversial moment, Godard supports the bomb. Appeals to the positive side of the bomb. The bomb, he sees, is the revolution as it once was in Europe. It is the reaction of the oppressed. It is difficult to support this in times when Europe suffers so much from terrorist attacks. But it is possible to understand Godard's side by trying to show this as reaction rather than action. Hence the parallel with revolutionary movements.

Godard is a genius. Often misunderstood, often seen as annoying and difficult to understand. But his film remains alive, thought-provoking and pleasurable for those who accept the challenge of trying to decipher it with each job.

Complex, very complex, different, very different, many images, few sounds, a lot to say in few words, film clippings, reports, animations, war, pain, suffering, sometimes disconnected, but always very intense... First work by Jean-Luc Godard that I watch, and I started with the most subjective, profound and strange... "The world is not interested in Arabs and Muslims, while Islam has political attention." Is about. That, about generalization, about Islamophobia, generalization, xenophobia, wanting to silence a nation... The director suggested that not all scenes were translated, so that the image and sound would speak for themselves... Amazing...

This is a video essay that feels like a window into the precious collection of a videophile. Living legend, french director Jean-Luc Godard stamps here his mastery with his recurring topics and concerns. Very violent images dance with an adventurous collage of fine visual material, a result of a long time journey. I think the outcome is unbeatable and enjoyable if you are looking for new structures, like a jazz freestyle solo but with images and poetry instead of notes. It's a story about tragedy, revolution, the Arabic world, east vs west types of understandings and life itself.

If you feel like watching it do it, but be prepare to face an unorthodox editing, sound level surprises, non causal argument and beautiful images of a tragic reality, the reality of humans and its imaginary.