Photo: Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique
n Notre Musique (Our Music), Jean-Luc Godard's Dante-inspired cinematic tone poem, the great French director takes his audience on a journey from heaven to hell, from image to imagination. Godard divides his film into three stanzas—"Hell", "Purgatory", and "Heaven"—and acts as our guide (our Virgil) through numerous levels of existence. "Hell" is a furious montage of existing texts (cinematic warfare both fiction and fact). Godard takes dreams realized on film and filters them through his video sensibility, degrading and manipulating the images so that they're familiar only in the way of ghostly memories. He sweeps us along the downward spiral's many torrents, fact (the German oppressors) mingled with fiction (a Griffith battlefield), the end nowhere in sight. Godard forces us to see the recognizable anew, opening our minds (our music) with these juxtapositions of history. Keith Uhlich
n Notre Musique (Our Music), Jean-Luc Godard's Dante-inspired cinematic tone poem, the great French director takes his audience on a journey from heaven to hell, from image to imagination. Godard divides his film into three stanzas—"Hell", "Purgatory", and "Heaven"—and acts as our guide (our Virgil) through numerous levels of existence. "Hell" is a furious montage of existing texts (cinematic warfare both fiction and fact). Godard takes dreams realized on film and filters them through his video sensibility, degrading and manipulating the images so that they're familiar only in the way of ghostly memories. He sweeps us along the downward spiral's many torrents, fact (the German oppressors) mingled with fiction (a Griffith battlefield), the end nowhere in sight. Godard forces us to see the recognizable anew, opening our minds (our music) with these juxtapositions of history. Keith Uhlich
