Notre Musique

By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2.75
Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Country: france, switzerland

Year: 2004

Running time: 80

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360845/combined

Bruce says: “It is sad but fairly accurate to say that Jean-Luc Godard is past his prime. Part of the problem lies with the fact that he is stuck in a time warp; he has not changed his filmmaking with the times. There is a lack of freshness. That said, NOTRE MUSIQUE is not a bad film – just not an exciting one.

“Divided into three parts, the first Godard has labeled ‘Hell.’ This segment consists of news coverage of various 20th Century wars interspersed with clips from war films and films depicting violence. It is short, the message obvious.

“The second section is ‘Purgatory,’ which comprises most of the film. Godard plays himself en route to lecturing at university in Sarajevo. During his lectures he uses stills from Howard Hawks’ films. He talks about shots and reverse shots and how the truth has two faces. He points out that Israel walked on water to reach the holy land and how the Palestinians have drowned in the same water. Shot/countershot. There is an Israeli journalist who is interviewing a famous Palestinian poet. He tells her ‘We Palestinians are famous because you are our enemy. We are your propaganda ministry.’ Several other characters add some verbal spice to the mix including Olga, a French Jew who wants to blow herself up to prove a point. There are American Indians wandering about in Sarajevo in sequences that make little sense. An interesting moment occurs when a photo of a war torn city is held up. ‘Do you know where this is?’ After several reasonable but incorrect replies, it is revealed that the burned out city in the photo is Richmond, Virginia, taken during the Civil War.

“As the camera pans and lingers, voiceovers spout pedantic ponderings about mankind’s infinite capacity for the inhumane. Overall, Godard makes me feel I’m in a lecture hall listening to a didactic lecturer vacillating between the philosophic and the poetic. I’m taking abstract, sketchy notes which hopefully will make sense when it comes time to cram for exams. This is not a feeling that I particularly relish. Why did I take this course?

“‘Heaven’ is the final part. As a woman strolls through sylvan paths replete with bubbling brooks and wild flowers under a slightly clouded sky, she comes to the ocean but has to get past the military and circumvent barbed wire to reach the man she is meeting. Not my idea of heaven. 2.5 cats”

This film was shown as part of the 2004 New York Film Festival.

Michael says: “Jean-Luc Godard began making films in the 1950’s, with NOTRE MUSIQUE being his most recent release. I am unfamiliar with most of the director’s work, including such classics as BAND OF OUTSIDERS and CONTEMPT. The only other film I have seen is BREATHLESS, of which I was not a big fan. I can’t really say whether NOTRE MUSIQUE is a well-made film or not; most of it went over my head. The pedantic political and intellectual lecturing that make up the films ‘narrative’ grew tiresome and was for the most part, beyond me.

“NOTRE MUSIQUE is split into three parts, Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, with the middle section making up the bulk of the film. There really isn’t any narrative to speak of, and I would almost venture to say the film is experimental. Opening with Hell, Godard bombards us with visions of war, from news footage of slaughtered corpses in barren fields, to cartoonish war movies from all eras, all while a woman’s voiceover spouts lofty phrases. Purgatory follows two young women in Sarajevo, Judith, an Israeli reporter interviewing a Palestinian poet, and Olga, a film student of visiting scholar Godard himself. There is no real narrative to speak of, and all the dialogue is delivered in a manner of professor’s lecturing to a University classroom. There are some extraordinarily beautiful images, and definite political ideas being bandied about, but as I mentioned, so much went over my head that I’m sure I missed any point the filmmaker was trying to convey. Heaven features a young woman (is it Olga?) who must circumvent a barbed wire fence and what looks like a U.S. marine, in order to reach the banks of an idyllic river where people dance, read, and enjoy themselves… perhaps the banks of paradise?

“In some ways, NOTRE MUSIQUE reminded me of Richard Linklater’s WAKING LIFE, where characters (albeit animated) engage in philosophical discussions. However, the discussions shared in Linklater’s film were more accessible to me, and actually seemed to come together in some sort of unity by the film’s end. Godard’s film, while certainly tackling some important issues, was too dense and obtuse to be enjoyable. 2 ½ cats”

Chris says: “Jean-Luc Godard’s recent films seem scarcely recognizable from his best-known work. Sometime after WEEKEND (1967), playfulness and accessibility gave way to pretension, intellectualism and something approaching anarchy; not really the gleeful, punk kind, but a strain more subversive and belabored. Truthfully, I haven’t seen much of his later work, apart from the button-pushing HAIL MARY (1985) (which six years later I barely remember anything about) and the oblique, contentious IN
PRAISE OF LOVE (2001).

“His latest is likely his most embraced effort in decades. Though far from the most engaging ‘art’ film I’ve seen in the past year (certainly nowhere near GOODBYE DRAGON INN or even PRIMER), its merits barely outweigh its debits. From what I can gather, NOTRE MUSIQUE is rumination on war, complacency and shifting/evolving political paradigms. As is typical of Godard, it’s structured into chapters: Hell and Heaven respectively (and briefly) open and close the film, while the intervening Purgatory makes up the bulk of it. Hell and Heaven both approach poetry, the former with an emotional montage of found footage dating back to Nazi Germany, the latter set entirely in a self-contained emulation of paradise that feels like a dream. Purgatory, on the other hand, exists entirely in modern-day Sarajevo and resembles a free-form lecture, densely stringing together a journalist, a young female Russian-Jewish activist, a few Native Americans, cool camera tricks, and lots of discourse with little narrative holding it together.

“I wish Godard aimed for more clarity in presenting all these ideas/images as a thesis, and to argue that the complexity of these issues doesn’t allow for it is a cop-out. But I can’t entirely dismiss this film for merely being obtuse. True, I did nod off at random moments throughout Purgatory, but at other instances, I felt wrapped up in Godard’s images, particularly one scene where the ‘protagonist’ gradually, almost magically comes into focus. Unlike IN PRAISE OF LOVE, I can imagine returning to NOTRE MUSIQUE again, trying to fit its disparate puzzle pieces into place to at least get at Godard’s big picture, if one does indeed exist. 3 cats”