Notre musique

Notre Musique
Directed by	Jean-Luc Godard
Produced by	Alain Sarde Ruth Waldburger
Written by	Jean-Luc Godard
Starring	Sarah Adler Nade Dieu Jean-Luc Godard Ronny Kramer Georges Aguilar
Cinematography	Jean-Christophe Beauvallet Julien Hirsch
Release dates	May 19 2004
Running time	80 minutes
Country	Switzerland France
Language	French Arabic English Hebrew Serbo-Croatian Spanish

Notre musique (Our Music) is a 2004 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The film reflects on violence, morality, and the representation of violence in film, and touches especially on past colonialism and the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was screened out of competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.^[1]

Plot

The film's tripartite structure is apparently inspired by the Divine Comedy of Dante; the film's three segments are titled "Realm 1: Hell", "Realm 2: Purgatory", and "Realm 3: Heaven".

The first segment is a relatively brief, non-narrative montage composed of war footage, propaganda footage, and battle scenes and other scenes of chaos from fictional films, constantly intercut, and accompanied by classical piano.

The second segment, which is relatively straightforwardly narrative, makes up the bulk of the film. It tells the story of two young women visiting a European arts conference in Sarajevo: Judith Lerner (Sarah Adler), a journalist from Tel Aviv, and Olga Brodsky (Nade Dieu), a French-speaking Jew of Russian descent. Judith interviews the poet Mahmoud Darwish (played by himself) at the conference, and surveys the city, visiting the Mostar bridge, where she reads Emmanuel Levinas (Entre Nous). Olga makes a digital-video film of the conference, is visited by her uncle Ramos Garcia (Rony Kramer), who is translating for the conference, and attends a lecture on film by Godard (who plays himself). The Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo also appears as himself.

The third segment, a brief postlude, shows Olga walking contemplatively through a quiet lakeside setting which appears to be guarded by American soldiers.

Critical reception

The film received generally positive reviews from critics. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 65% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 52 reviews.^[2] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 77 out of 100, based on 19 reviews.^[3]

Awards and nominations

• European Film Awards
  • Nominated: Best Actress (Sarah Adler)
  • Nominated: Best Screenwriter (Jean-Luc Godard)

• San Sebastián Film Festival (Spain)
  • Won: FIPRESCI Film of the Year (Jean-Luc Godard)

References

External links

• Notre musique at the Internet Movie Database
• Notre musique at allmovie
• Notre musique at Rotten Tomatoes
• Notre musique at Metacritic
• Notre musique at Box Office Mojo