Capital Celluloid 2014 - Day 85: Wed Mar 26

King Lear (Godard, 1987): Cine Lumiere, 7.30pm


This film is part of the 70x70 season. London writer, filmmaker and 'psychogeographer' Iain Sinclair celebrates his 70th birthday year, with the showing of 70 films, handpicked for their association with his work and shown in venues all over London. Here you can find a full list of the programme.

Chicago Reader review:
Jean-Luc Godard's zany, English-speaking quasi adaptation of the Shakespeare play has the most complex and densely layered use of Dolby sound in movies. The "itinerary" of the film--one can't quite consider it a plot--involves a post-Chernobyl view of culture in general and Shakespeare's play in particular. Among the performers, mainly used by Godard as a painter might use colors, are stage director Peter Sellars, Molly Ringwald (as Cordelia), Burgess Meredith (as Lear), a semi-incoherent Godard (as someone called Professor Pluggy), and, in smaller parts, Norman Mailer, his daughter Kate Miller, film director Leos Carax, and Woody Allen. The film certainly qualifies as a perverse provocation on more levels than one, but one of these levels--believe it or not--is Shakespeare. It may drive you nuts, but it is probably the most inventive and original Godard film since Passion.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is an extract.

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