This movie is a seduction that led me willingly through its labyrinth...not toward a Minator...but to the riches of cinematic imagery and intellectual meditation. Godard continues his exemplary journey into the unexpected, the unconventional, confounding, but with a paradoxically deliberate pull into the first hand experience of the mystery, not through a narrative telling, but in the evocation of the quick-cut images themselves. Despite the aphorisms and many linguistic delights that tease the mind, its the dense black and white film in the first half of the movie and the sudden shift to digital video color (symbolic, in its gaudiness, of the distortion that occurs in memory) that create effective impact.
In its content, the maturation process, memory, history, politics, resistance to the pseudo. and above all art in its many forms are dealt with largely through the eyes of the artist/creator...with a sense of note-taking and exploration. In its anti-Americanism there tends to be exaggeration and projection...although a wise comment ("They're just like us." i.e., the French) is a saving one.
The performances are splendid...totally believable with an almost documentary realism.
For any film-goer interested in imaginative, challenging movie fare this shouldn't be missed.
