Reviewed by Dwight Casimere at the New York Film Festival Sept. 16
As one can expect, the film is an amalgram of complex, yet beautiful images that capture bits of an illicit romance-in- progress between a young man and a married woman, shots of Godard's own dog, Roixy Mieville, wandering between the country and the city, the political storm of the Holocaust, even the English Romantic poet Lord Byron weighs in with a cameo.
The 70-minute visual experiment takes us from the ocean front, where the romantic couple apparently meet in a series of flashbacks, to their rendezvous, where they engage in various stages of intimacy, punctuated by escalating conflict that ends in physical abuse.
The film, divided into chapters entitled "Nature" and "Metaphor" grapples with images of Imperialism and the Holocaust, then shifts to idyllic, brightly colored montages of flowers, boats and children at play.
Without any concrete narrative, the film raises some troubling issues concerning the contradiction between the things we perceive visually, and their underlying meanings.
Jean-Luc Godard burst on the cinematic scene more than 50 years ago, and quickly became a cult figure and icon of the 1960s.
His latest film, has affirmed his continuing stature as one of cinema's most enduring and relevant voices.
Editor's Note:The National Society of Film Critics has chosen the 3-D movie "Goodbye to Language" as the best picture of 2014 in their 49th annual awards meeting in New York City.
Opens Friday, January-February 5 visit www.genesiskelfilmcenter.org for times and tickets
From January 3 through March 4, the Gene Siskel Film Center presents “Godard: The First Wave,” a series of seventeen features and three shorts concentrating on the still vigorous auteur’s early career.
From January 3 through March 4, the Gene Siskel Film Center presents “Godard: The First Wave,” a series of seventeen features and three shorts concentrating on the still vigorous auteur’s early career.
Scenes from Jean- Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language
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