Goodbye to Language 3D 2014

The 2014 Cannes jury paid homage to the great New Wave Jean-Luc Godard director in his 84th year with a Jury Award for his dazzling – and typically dense – foray into 3D. “Contempt meets Lassie, sort of, in Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language, a characteristically vigorous, playful, mordant commentary on everything from the state of movies to the state of the world from French cinema’s oldest living enfant terrible. Its title notwithstanding, Godard’s 39th feature-length work proves its maker has plenty left to say and plenty of new ways of saying it, from its freewheeling use of multiple video formats to its radical experiments in 3D. For 70 densely packed minutes that feel like an adrenaline shot to the brain, Goodbye continually reaffirms that no single filmmaker has done more to test and reassert the possibilities of the moving image during the last half-century of the art form. All but those who wish Godard had never ventured past what he was doing circa 1968 should take much pleasure in the result… As in all Godard’s best work, precise meaning is subsumed in an exhilarating tide of sound and light, impish provocations and inspired philosophizing.” — Scott Foundas, Variety