Notre musique

I've just come back from the cinema and it's raining very hard. But there's the sun, too, which is going down behind the mountains. It's very poetic. But not nearly as poetic as Jean Luc Godard's last film, "Notre Musique".

The movie is divided into three kingdoms: 1 - Enfer, 2 - Purgatoire and 3 - Paradis. The first part of the movie consists in a collage of various war images and situations accompanied by a wonderful music. Some very clever sentences are said off screen, too. "Death can be seen in two different ways: as the possible of the impossible or as the impossible of the possible". The second part shows us the crossed stories of some peoples meeting in Sarajevo for the Book Weeks: J. L. Godard himself, a young Israeli Journalist, a Palestinian and a Spanish poets, A young Hebrew girl with Russian origins, a Hebrew translator with Egyptian origins, some American natives, some natives of Sarajevo and other people speak about their experiences, they wishes, war, peace, poetry, history, life, death, cinema, reconciliation. J.L. Godard gives a lecture to some cinema students and shows them photographs. The third part takes place in paradise and shows us a girl who has been killed in a cinema by Israeli snipers who suspected her of being a terrorist ready to kill herself. She had a red bag with her and people thought it contained a bomb. In fact there were just books in it. The girl wanders near a river and encounters an American marine. Some boys are playing and reading books. Paradise is fenced and guarded by U.S. military forces.

This movie is truly amazing. In fact it is not just a film, it is poetry. In moments like these when cinema industry is dominated by fast, brainless, action-packed movies, it is a real pleasure and mind-freeing experience to see something that beautiful and poetic. This was presented this year in Cannes and didn't get much attention if I remember right. A journalist of "Le Nouvel Observateur" who usually gives very good advices, this time got it wrong saying that "Notre Musique" is a senile work. Not at all. It's the work of a director who has only improved with years and who has reached total serenity and great wisdom. This film does not give you ready-made, simple answers to common questions, it gives you some points which are incredibly interesting to develop and think about. Sarajevo is the ideal place where peoples, histories and cultures mix and sometimes sadly clash. When the young girl is asked "Why Sarajevo?" the touching answer she gives is "Because Palestine. I come from Tel Aviv and wanted to see a place where people can get along in harmony". There's so much to think about this movie. And everything is filmed so well, so limpidly, with such a mastery, you can't stop staring at the screen. "Godard is the only film director in the world" (Freddy Buache)

I first saw Notre Musique at the NY film festival, and responded to it strongly because it was, after going through a slew of his more recent work of the 80s and 90s (often hit or miss, more miss), a very well structured, interesting picture with a very distinct look and feel that balanced the elegiac and darkness with some light. Watching it again, I'm still fascinated most by the first segment 'Hell'. If this was just a stand-alone short film, I would rank it among some of Godard's best work from the 60s. It's brash, it's seemingly unending, the narration actually does fit the images on screen (which, from my perspective, is what ends up usually irking me with some of Godard's later work when he does this), and all of these images of civilization decaying through war and other disasters, and the machinery and technology used for all of this death and horror, really works to a great effect.

Purgatory, the second segment, is often quite good, as it's a really well-balanced mix of fiction and documentary as real life writers and professors and journalists go through issues like Sarajevo, troubles in the middle east, and cinema itself as Godard humorously and sometimes somberly goes through a lecture to some students as he's part of the setting. There's even a perfectly understated, interested performance by the lead Sarah Adler. When the film then transforms into the last act, Paradise, it kind of starts to break some of the power and interest in the previous sections of the film (I didn't really connect with much of the symbolism, as beautifully photographed as it all was). But what ends up really impressing me most about Notre Musique is that I really could understand most, if not all, of what many of these long stretches of dialog were about- unlike in some past, notoriously messy films by the director- and it worked without Godard's way of filming subjects and locations. Julien Hirsch's cinematography, going through the director's vision, is often so striking I'd say it's some of the best that was done in 2004 anywhere.

There's still some kind of documentarian's spirit at heart, and it really does work best in the conversations that go on in the film, as lots of subject matter gets covered. This mixed with a partially fictionalized story helps to make something pretty special, if not really sensational, and in its 80 minute running time nothing overstays its welcome. If anything, the film is almost too short by a few minutes. It's a mix of history, politics, poetry, cinema, and the meanings of life and death, and not often does it come off pretentious.

When you go on holiday, do you ever say, "Oh Look! Look at that"? How does sharing it make it different for us? How is the experience lessened when we don't have another person there?

A scientist measures position and momentum of a particle, but no matter how accurate the measurements, there is always an uncertainty in the results. This Nobel Prize theory is known as 'Heisenberg's uncertainty principle' and has profound implications for physics and philosophy. (At the atomic and sub-atomic level, an act of observation noticeably affects what is being observed.)

Godard mentions Heisenberg through one of his (Heisenberg's) anecdotes. Godard's main interest is funnelled through the cinematic device of shot/reverse angle shot. He examines how it can enlarge understanding of deeper issues. In Notre Musique, Godard is protagonist not for political ideology or social comment. He is flag-bearer. For film. For poetry. For film-as-poetry. Like Maya Deren in her copious writings on cinematic theory, he shoulders the burden of artist-filmmaker with all seriousness, proffering a new language. A different way to view the world. He becomes the lens. We make it our camera.

"Heisenberg and Bohr," he says, "were walking in the Danish countryside, talking about physics. They come to Elsinore Castle. The German scientist said, 'Oh, there's nothing special about this castle.' The Danish physicist said, 'Yes, but if you say, "Hamlet's Castle," then it becomes special.'

Godard stars as himself in this mix of documentary, fiction and montage. He is speaking about on text and image, at the European Literary Encounters Conference in Bosnia. In the Heisenberg story, 'Hamlet's Castle' becomes a literary 'shot/reverse shot.' Godard concerns us with the power of romanticism. His takes on Israeli-Palestinian conflict are refreshingly non-judgemental. Notre Musique calls for a revolution of creative force, "that reinforces memory, clarifies dreams and gives substance to images." Continuing his discourse on the power of the 'real' and the 'poetic,' Godard explains how, "the Jews become the stuff of fiction: the Palestinians, of documentary." (Look at the cinematic output of both, and how Palestinians are defined largely in relation to Israel.)

One storyline concerns two young girls visiting Sarajevo – a place 'where reconciliation seems possible.' Judith is an Israeli journalist. She interviews, among others, Palestinian intellectual and celebrated poet, Mahmoud Darwich. (In Darwich's work, Palestine becomes a metaphor for the loss of Eden, for birth and resurrection, and for the anguish of dispossession. As with Heisenberg, this contextual reference is not explained in the film itself. Understanding them is not essential but does enrich the enjoyment of Notre Musique. ) Also at the Encounters is Olga, a Jewish-French student of Russian descent. She videos Godard's lecture and tries to give him a copy. In some ways, she is an alter-ego, a 'shot/reverse shot' of Judith.

The concept of dialogue (in a non-verbal sense) is developed as Godard critiques 'shot/reverse shot' as part of his lecture. This cinematic device, usually used when two people are talking to each other, reverses the camera so we see each person seemingly from the other's viewpoint as they speak. The angle provides a mental continuity for us, even though both people are not on screen together. The actual change in camera angle, now a convention, is not really 180 degrees but anything from 120 to 160. The person is slightly offset, rather than directly facing the camera (which would also appear more confrontational).

Notre Musique is one of Godard's most responsible, articulate and accessible works. Which makes it doubly shameful that many critics failed to expend the minimal energy required to engage with it, preferring instead to give a banal description that belies their clocking-on superficiality, and usually finishing with a self-satisfied dismissal by 'cleverly' observing that Godard has slightly misquoted something or that his ideas are too hard to follow. As if that mattered. (A more mature analysis was given by BFI writer Michael Witt who said the film, "functions simultaneously as a bulwark against the tyranny of received ideas and as a laboratory for the generation of fresh perspectives.") Notre Musique is structured into a somewhat artificial triptych of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. The first covers the horrors of war through the ages up to the present. The second, mental scars left on survivors. The brief 'heaven' follows what might probably have been part two's tragic conclusion (related by a disembodied voice over a phone at the end of the second act). Cinematography and editing have all of Godard's hallmark crispness. Some of the subtitling is sloppy, even misspelling Bohr's name (something that will irritate adherents of form over substance).

A glimpse of a penguin near the beginning gives it an almost anthropological tone, man portrayed as obsessively armed for the extermination of his own kind. Descending from the 'age of fable,' the hollowness of popular morality is hinted at briefly. A woman on her knees beseeches a soldier. The Lord's Prayer is quoted, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." Irony is underlined in a refrain, "As we forgive them, and no differently," which is twice repeated. It is not a song that has carried much weight against war. Can the music of artists and poets do any better? Recently I watched a multiplex trailer for 'this summer's movies.' It asked, and 'answered' everything I supposedly 'want' from films. Thrills. Excitement. Explosions. Laughs. Being whisked off to an imaginary world. And so on. I listened to the end of the list waiting in vain for something like, "being mentally stimulated." If you are also unsatisfied by the surfeit of cinematic trash that puts your brain on hold, this film might be for you. If, however, like the critics who simply rate it against competing blockbusters and find it lacking, you maybe do not wish to exercise any of those mental muscles then, like this humble review, it will not be the welcome sunbeam that makes or doesn't make your summer.

There are movies to help you relax on a Saturday night and there are movies that stimulate, even if that means asking questions that have no answers. I didn't understand this movie but I still felt stimulated by its questions. I tried so hard to make the connections and I had a lot of trouble. But you don't read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man once without discussing it and expect to understand it. Nor is the more accessible Three Colors Trilogy meant to be seen only once for complete understanding. The quality of a movie is not determined by its accessibility. It's a limited understanding of the medium to judge film by its accessibility. It can be more than an easy way to relax. It can be the impetus to dialogue. I cared about this movie because I didn't understand it.

It is sometimes hard for creative and well meaning filmmakers to accept the fact that their political and philosophical understanding of the world might not be as rounded as their movie making skills. Godard shows in this excruciating film that he clearly falls into this category of filmmakers. 'Notre Musique' is well intentioned, for sure. Godard seeks to obfuscate the lines between reality and drama, the sensible and the absurd (heaven guarded by US marines). In doing so, however, the film becomes Godard's 'international politics explained' more than an engaging piece of cinema. Being a visual medium as it is, cinema needs to add layers of subtlety to what's seen (so that we look beyond that which is seen), in order to be not only an effective messenger but also an exercise in self-exploration. 'Notre Musique' is a blaring loudspeaker with Godard in control of the microphone.