The Image Book

In a year of seem­ing­ly unmit­i­gat­ed hor­rors, there’s a per­verse com­fort to be had in the arrival of a new film by New Wave god­head turned cut-and-paste col­lage mae­stro, Jean-Luc Godard. And based on this evi­dence, the French mas­ter hasn’t mel­lowed in old age, still dis­play­ing a stead­fast belief in cinema’s pow­er as a tool for intel­lec­tu­al provocation.

His newest offer­ing, The Image Book, is a fit­ting com­pan­ion to his pre­vi­ous fea­ture from 2014, Good­bye to Lan­guage, which was filmed in 3D. In his win­ter years, it appears the auteur is work­ing through the sens­es. The images con­tained with­in The Image Book are pulled large­ly from news­reels and cin­e­mat­ic history.

Some­times they dance atop one anoth­er, and some­times they’ll appear in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flash. It’s all topped by a voiceover from the direc­tor him­self. It’s a lot to take in, and view­ers might wish for foot­notes to help fill in the blanks, but the film ulti­mate­ly invites us to sit, watch and go along with the alter­nate­ly incen­di­ary and calm­ing tableaux. Of course, this task is eas­i­er said than done.

At a screen­ing dur­ing the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, where the film received its North Amer­i­can pre­mière, there was a steady stream of walk­outs – a slight sur­prise giv­en Godard’s stature. The polit­i­cal imagery can be a lit­tle mud­dled – at times you’re left to won­der just how effec­tive the director’s recon­tex­tu­al­i­sa­tion of news footage is. But the voiceover offers a com­pelling through­line that feels like a small con­ces­sion to a poten­tial­ly baf­fled audi­ence. Lines like: ​“Soci­ety is based on a shared mur­der,” and, ​“The act of rep­re­sen­ta­tion almost always involves vio­lence,” are cut­ting indict­ments of our cur­rent moment, and with years of polem­i­cal film­mak­ing behind him, such pro­nounce­ments car­ry even more weight.

In hear­ing these state­ments and nod­ding along, we may well wish that such words could dri­ve us to rad­i­cal polit­i­cal action. There’s some­thing frus­trat­ing in the real­i­sa­tion that Godard’s provo­ca­tions are preach­ing to the choir. The issue of whether cin­e­ma can be tru­ly rad­i­cal and cre­ate off-screen change is too lofty to tack­le here, but at least Godard is an artist ful­ly com­mit­ted to this cause, find­ing cre­ative rewards through angry ener­gy for half a cen­tu­ry and counting.

If The Image Book isn’t always easy to con­nect with, it does offer an unmis­tak­able gut punch in its final moments. As the pro­ceed­ings wind down, Godard begins to cough. As nar­ra­tor, he doesn’t posi­tion him­self as a divine pres­ence – his voice is raspy and his state­ments are fre­quent­ly enig­mat­ic. The cough is the ulti­mate sign of his human­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty. It’s a moment of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty from a direc­tor known for confrontation.

At 87, Godard might be con­sid­er­ing delet­ing his edit­ing soft­ware for good, but the ques­tion of whether The Image Book is his swan­song remains to be seen. What this film has to offer – the sounds that jar­ring­ly fade in and out, the snip­pets of alter­nate­ly com­ic and trag­ic cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry, the com­mit­ment to col­lage and images over­sat­u­rat­ed to the point of lush beau­ty – makes for a pro­duc­tive­ly con­found­ing and potent work. Com­ing from JLG, we wouldn’t expect any­thing less.