The Image Book

Veteran French auteur Jean-Luc Godard bewilders and delights with dizzying essay film The Image Book

Film Review by Gianni Marini | 23 Nov 2018
Film title: The Image Book
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Starring: Jean-Luc Godard
Release date: 2 Dec
Certificate: 15

Master auteur Jean-Luc Godard slices, stitches and obfuscates images and sounds to create an essay film that develops the themes that preoccupy his more recent work. The Image Book is like a condensed version of his video collage masterpiece Histoire(s) du cinéma. His subject is representation, specifically of the world through text and then through images. Clips from Hollywood films are juxtaposed with war newsreels and overlaid with Godard’s own gravelly voiceover. He forms a narrative through references and quotes from philosophers and writers, exploring parallels and dissonance between the revolutions that formed Europe and those which Europeans commit around the world.

Godard crafts cinema as an artist: images and sounds blend or stay separate like oil and vinegar layering meaning atop his work. There are some striking similarities and comparisons to be made with Adam Curtis, much of whose work also explores how the Arab world is represented in media. Curtis’ Bitter Lake or HyperNormalisation offer exquisitely researched macro views of how representation affects reality. Godard offers visual poetry: art that relies on the audience to connect to be effective.

The most tense and arresting moments are those when footage of a city street somewhere in the Middle East lingers on screen. You can feel it, the pregnancy of impending doom, because we expect these images to shatter, engulfed in smoke and fire. Later, Godard cuts together material from home videos and footage shot on phones, and – without any notion of smooth editing – the jarring calamitous sound of bombing intermittently roars around you.

The Image Book presents a damning judgement of cinema's complicity in Western history whilst itself bolstering the canon of cinema that seeks to be radical and revolutionary. But when a disillusioned female voice says, “We are never sad enough for the world to be better,” it rings true. Godard sees us as burdened under masses of knowledge, yet unwilling to listen.


The Image Book is released 2 Dec by Mubi; Certificate 15