Our Music 2004

Part visual poem, part journalism, part philosophical treatise, the latest opus from Jean-Luc Godard is a reflection on the wars that blight the world. Bracketed between brilliant short sections entitled ‘Hell’ and ‘Heaven’, most of the film takes place in ‘Purgatory’; a European book conference in Sarajevo, dealing with the responsibilies and impotence of contemporary artists and intellectuals. 

“Our Music… is rigorously shot, but with an interior mellowness that’s far from the scatter-gun, guerrilla mentality of even his last movie, In Praise of Love. The picture is a philosophical meditation on man’s inability to reconcile the contrary forces in his makeup – here, seen through the savagery and pointlessness of war… At 73, the French-born Swiss filmmaker ranks as one of the few of his generation with a cohesive moral position tied to a stubborn love of cinema – and, more importantly, fresh ways of conveying both. Essentially elegiac in flavor, [the] film carries an emotional power in its final stages that is all the more moving for its simplicity.” — Derek Elley, Variety