Notre Musique on DVD | MovieMail UK

Star Review

Fifteen minutes into Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique, the great man is asked “Why aren't revolutions started by the most humane people?”, to which he replies “Because humane people don't start revolutions: they start libraries”, and his companion ruefully adds “And cemeteries”. Godard is in Sarajevo to deliver a lecture on “le texte et l'image”, during which he unpicks the principles governing the way cinema trivialises reality by packaging it into neatly digestible audience-friendly gobbets (satirised by a virtuoso ten-minute opening montage, which fuses genuine war footage with glossy Hollywood and Mosfilm reconstructions). And not just cinema: the ongoing reconstruction of the Mostar bridge raises similar issues (is it still the same bridge, or a memorial to its predecessor and the war that destroyed it?), as does the dilemma of an Israeli journalist contemplating suicide, a gesture that cannot help but be overloaded with symbolic implications. Crammed with far too many ideas to take in at one sitting (it arguably works better as a DVD), Notre Musique is unusually approachable for late Godard, perhaps because it deals with genuinely universal and all too topical themes.

Michael Brooke on 8th July 2005

View all 51 of Michael Brooke’s reviews

[ Show Film Description ]