Godard's adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is admirable for its brave, Brechtian depiction of the retarded, but its soundtrack is the noose that strangles it.

It's hard to find another director who can drop hardcore philosophical statements, war documentaries, a little bit of Tarkovskian meditation, himself as a greek-chorus like figure and still get away with it. Godard has grown so wise in these years. A great movie on war. Only Godard can randomly quote Camus and Brecht like nothing... And for this I dearly love him.

There's gotta be a better way to do this. Notre musique finds Godard dropping his hectoring stance in favor of a dense, rambling discourse that, I confess, gave me multiple borgasms. As an essay on paper, it might have made an interesting read (or it might not have --Godard has a tendency to stop a line of thought at an aphorism rather than tease it out through logic). As cinema, it's stultifying.

An essay on cultural differences and war, amongst other things, and it's a remarkably warm film despite dealing with dark subject matter. Very documentary-like, but its realism is sometimes relieved by evocative and stylized images, and it's all tied together very well, adding to the film's thought provoking nature. Deadly serious and optimistically warm-hearted.

"Godard only seems impenetrable because he talks nonsense."

"Godard forces us to see the recognizable anew, opening our minds (our music) with juxtapositions of history." - Keith Uhlich

Godard doesn't just have the best pair of eyes in cinema; he also has the best functioning mind. Perhaps his most personal film, Notre Musique demonstrates this auteur's simultaneous understanding of powerful imagery and stirring socio-political theme, documenting human struggle (and warfare) across and between cultural divides, and human history. Godard the Humanist battles Godard the Misanthrope in this reflective, captivating and educational film. It's artfully magnificent.

I still haven't grasped the film.

A stimulating and beautiful film marked by enduring confidence and curiosity - and surprising gentleness. An inquiry of sorts, I presume, but it feels like a mixture of many things. I don't know why, but Sarah Adler almost touched me to tears...