To many film critics, one of the big surprises a few years back at the 2004 New York Film Festival was a film heralding "the return of a master" -- Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique. The only problem with that statement is that Godard never returned because he never went away. It's just that the critics were finally catching up with him.

Norte Musique is a dense, cerebral film essay, structured upon Dante's Divine Comedy. The first section, "Hell," is a disturbing montage of horrific war images both real and mythical (film clips of old Hollywood films).

Section Two, "Purgatory," takes places in Sarajevo, a recent real life version of Hell which, with all the current versions of Hell in the world now seems very far away indeed. In this section, Godard makes an appearance as himself but in a different incarnation than he has in past films. Instead of the stupefied Uncle Jean of First Name: Carmen or the Jerry Lewis-esque filmmaker of Keep Up Your Right, in Notre Musique Godard appears at The Patriarch of the Intellect, lording it over a rapt gaggle of students at a literature conference. At the conference, as Godard pontificates, he encounters a Spanish author, a Palestinian poet, and Native American activists. The section ends in Godard's garden back home, answering his phone after beaning himself in the head, finding that the niece of his translator at the conference has been killed after threatening to blow up a movie theater.

In the virtually silent final section, "Heaven," a woman roams a celestial arboreal dell, American military standing guard of what could possibly be the gates of heaven.

Even for Godard films, Notre Musique is a difficult film to latch on to, particularly when it comes to the cinematic arts that Godard has twisted and turned and bled to his will. Now Godard is rejecting film and communication and calling for new forms of expression. For Godard, all the present cultural forms are inadequate to encompass the horrors the world has experienced. In this age of high technology, communication is as parsed and divorced as feudal kingdoms. Notre Musique is a veritable Tower of Babel as characters try to communicate through different languages and fail miserably. At one point a woman remarks, "If anyone understands me, then I wasn't clear." In a sense, Notre Musique is an entire film devoted to that statement, stifling in its hermetically sealed bleakness, concluding that the only forms of communication mankind understands are murder and war.

Which is why, at the end, Godard offers a faint glimmer of hope amid the rubble. But only if new forms of human connections and communication are found: "The principle of cinema is to go towards the light and shine it on our night, our music."

Notre Musique is a difficult but rewarding film that requires multiple viewings to appreciate and digest. But these difficulties are to be cherished. I can't think of another filmmaker who is as focused and single-minded in following his thesis out to the end. Rather than capitulate and look for the easy way out, Godard, at 78, is the youngest filmmaker at work today who's crying out for a new way of seeing, a new paradigm.



Pourquoi indeed.