Godard teaches a class
A frenzied montage of cinematic warfare, Hell is a whirlwind trip through the agony, devastation and loss inherent in war. Filtered through Godard's lens, fact and fiction merge into one ghastly nightmare. Epic Griffith battle scenes are eroded and commingled with archival footage from the numerous wars mankind has waged. Showing only chaos and destruction while bombarding our ears with cacophonous din, Godard doesn't allow us to linger on any single image or identify with any character. There is no triumphant music here, no excitement at the action unfolding, no resolution or catharsis. Any semblance of glory and heroism has been stripped away, leaving only the grim realities of war, burning ghostly impressions in our minds as the visual and aural dissonance assault our senses for what seems like an eternity. This is Hell.
Two men speaking in Sarajevo
The characters drift in and out of the film, embarking on discussions of peace, love, death, forgiveness, philosophy, cinema, poetry, and life as if they were stuck in a cosmic waiting room, attempting to puzzle out the world before them and their purpose within it. There is a pervasive sense that this is merely an indeterminate layover, a place to exchange ideas while seeking the truth in duality - in the fusion of opposites - an idea that Godard expounds upon with his shot reverse shot lecture.
But it is Olga who finally turns words into actions. After informing her uncle of her intent to commit suicide, she goes into a movie theater in Jerusalem armed with nothing more than a sack of books. A phone call to Godard reveals that she was gunned down by Israeli police when they mistook the book bag for a bomb. As we are left to speculate on her intent, Godard leads us into the final kingdom - Heaven.
Olga
Filled with these types of poetic images, along with a myriad of meditations on duality -life and death, perception and imagination - "Notre Musique" is heady stuff. An antiwar opus too rich to be fully digested in one viewing, each meticulously constructed shot demonstrates Godard's fluency in the language of cinema, drawing us further into the film's world, raising new questions and searching for the truth within each pairing. This duality, the meaning born of the collision of thesis and antithesis - this is our music, and the truth lies somewhere within.