The Image Book

The Image Book
File:Le Livre d'image.png Film poster
Directed by	Jean-Luc Godard
Produced by	in association with Hamidreza Pejman George schoucair
Written by	Jean-Luc Godard
Cinematography	Fabrice Aragno
Edited by	Jean-Luc Godard Fabrice Aragno Jean-Paul Battaggia Nicole Brenez
Production company	Casa Azul Films Ecran Noir Productions In association with Hamidreza Pejman George Schoucair
Distributed by	Wild Bunch
Release dates	11 May 2018 (2018-05-11) (Cannes)
Running time	85 minutes
Country	Switzerland France

The Image Book (French: Le Livre d'image) is a 2018 Swiss avant-garde essay film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Initially titled Tentative de bleu and Image et parole, in December 2016 Wild Bunch co-chief Vincent Maraval stated that Godard had been shooting the film for almost two years "in various Arab countries, including Tunisia" and that it is an examination of the modern Arabic world. Godard told Séance magazine that he was shooting without actors but the film would have a storyteller. It was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Although it did not win the official prize, the jury awarded it the first "Special Palme d'Or" in the festival's history. According to Godard, the film is intended to be shown on TV screens with speakers at a distance, in small spaces rather than in regular cinemas. It was shown in this way during its first run at the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne in November 2018.

Synopsis

In line with the rest of Godard's late-period oeuvre, The Image Book is composed of a series of films, paintings and pieces of music tied together with narration and additional original footage by Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville. Similar to his earlier series Histoire(s) du cinéma (and sometimes using some of the exact same film quotes), the film examines the history of cinema and its inability to recognise the atrocities of the 20th and 21st centuries (specifically the Holocaust, ISIS and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict), the responsibilities of the filmmaker and the advances in political discourse with the introduction of consumer-grade digital cameras and iPhones.

Reception

The film has a approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews, with an average rating of . The critics' consensus on it being stated as, "Potentially insurmountable for viewers not attuned to the director's wavelength, The Image Book is typically confounding - and ultimately rewarding - late-period Godard." It also holds a 76/100 on Metacritic. It was named the best film of 2019 by Cahiers du cinéma.

Richard Brody of The New Yorker gave high praise to the film, seeing it as "a sort of epilogue or sequel" to Godard's earlier work Histoire(s) du cinéma, and stated that the film centers around one theme: "the inadequate depiction of what he calls 'the Arab world' and, in particular, the dearth of iconic movie images from the Middle East—which he presents as a failure of the cinema itself, as well as of the world at large." For Bilge Ebiri, film critic for The Village Voice, the film was engaging in its editing of footage taken from varying sources, but Ebiri also shared an initial bafflement toward the film and the meaning of its chosen imagery until he conversed with Egyptian critic Joseph Fahim; Fahim shared to Ebiri that with the film's informed use of images from Middle Eastern cinema, Godard was attempting to deconstruct the Western narrative given to Arab societies and the Western influence on how cinema's history is recorded. Fahim added that "The images introduced by Godard in here are unknown to most Western critics who waxed poetic about the film."

Home media

The Image Book was released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber in the United States on May 21, 2019.

External links

• The Image Book at IMDb
• The Image Book at Rotten Tomatoes