Goodbye to Language (2014)

Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard
Country: France / Switzerland

Movie Review: Both experimental and philosophical, “Goodbye to Language” shows a creative Jean-Luc Godard who, at the age of 84, exposes his thoughts freely. Shot in 3D, the film showcases a personal stamp of ideas and metaphors, wrapped with a fictional story about the relationship between a single man and a married woman, who adopt Roxy, a stray dog. The man says the best inventions of the world were the infinity and zero. The woman, far more fatalist, disagrees saying it were sex and death. In an interspersed way, Godard makes considerations about the power of images and lost words, and brings us a bunch of references like Solzhenitsyn, Ellul, Rilke, Rodin, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, Monet, Riemann, Byron and Shelley, and even the Apaches, just to mention a few, while he tries to convey his own political and social vision of the world. Some notions are quite interesting while others get us completely lost, whether on ‘infinity’ or ‘zero’. In “Goodbye to Language”, Godard opts for a non-linear editing along with a fragmented narrative where the sequence of images, including black-and-white archive and multiple compositions saturated in color, multiply in front of our eyes. It might not be fully articulated, but it doesn’t disappoint either, in the sense that we’re pelted with valid personal thoughts presented with humor and a poignant sarcasm, that have wings to be explored (more than one viewing is required). That’s why Godard will always be remembered as a provocateur and a distinct cineaste. This is a philosophical trip only for those who take pleasure in watching plotless films.