The Image Book

Winner of the first Special Palme d'Or to be awarded in the history of the Cannes Film Festival, Jean-Luc Godard's Le livre d'image is another extraordinary addition to the French master's vast filmography. Ever the iconoclast and always the enquirer, Godard eschews actors and any pretence of narrative in this dazzling and brilliant film essay.

Displaying an encyclopedic grasp of cinema and its history, Godard pieces together fragments and clips them from some of the greatest films of the past, then digitally alters, bleaches, and washes them, all in the service of reflecting on what he sees in front of him and what he makes of the dissonance that surrounds him. He uses his own voice, reminiscent of those of Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan in the twilights of their careers, to guide us through the fascinating labyrinth of his mind. In some cases it is to reflect on the metaphysical properties of the world - time, and space, and where meaning is found - but more importantly it is the image, the thing that has obsessed Godard for his entire career, that anchors this film. His ontological enquiry into the image continues to be one of the most moving in history.

But, as always with Godard, the key issues he raises have to do with the legacy of the last century and its horrors: the incomprehension of Hiroshima and Auschwitz, events that coincided with cinema but which have somehow eluded its gaze. And, movingly, Le livre d'image also reflects on orientalism and the Arab world, grounding the new film very much in the present.

PIERS HANDLING