The legendary Jean-Luc Godard, 87 years old and still wielding the power to challenge and confound, follows his hit GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE with a wondrously fractured, hard-driving movie essay filled with seductive imagery and cryptic text that careens through the director’s theories on world history, Egypt, colonialism, Religions of the Book, and cinema itself. Just as he reinvented 3-D in GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE, this cinema magician re-imagines surround sound to create astonishing audio art with a soundtrack composed in intricate aural overlays, playful whack-a-mole shuffling of the stereo and surround channels, and his own narration in a spooky up-from-the-sepulcher voice. THE IMAGE BOOK invites a search for myriad hidden meanings but can also be enjoyed simply as a barrage of sound and image meant to wash over the senses. In French, English, Arabic, Italian, and German with English subtitles. DCP digital. (BS)
Chicago filmmaker, critic, and instructor Michael Smith, whose film Rendezvous in Chicago just screened at the Film Center, sat down with us to expound on what makes Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book a must-see! Watch here!