KING LEAR (1987) Jean-Luc Godard, Woody Allen, Freddy Buache, Leos Carax.

Description: REGION FREE-NTSC. ENGLISH AUDIO.Main title page.No cover. No label. A plain silver disc in a sleeve.PICTURE QUALITY 9.0/10.Jean-Luc Godard's KING LEAR (1987) Color/91'. Cast: JEAN-LUC GODARD, NORMAN MAILER, BURGESS MEREDITH, MOLLY RINGWALD, LEOS CARAX, JULY DELPY and WOODY ALLEN.From its birth, a table-napkin contract signed by Godard and producer Menahem Golan of Cannon Films at the Cannes Film Festival in 1985, to its disastrous world premiere at Cannes two years later, the project has always seemed farfetched and unreal, even as a hypothesis. From its inception, the film might be regarded as the packaging principle gone haywire; while the original package never quite made it to the screen — script by Norman Mailer, who would also play Lear; Woody Allen as the Fool — enough vestiges of it remain to prove that Godard has essentially honored, or at least parodied, the dottiness of the initial concept. He even starts the film off with a real phone conversation between himself and Golan, with the producer urging him to finish the film in time for Cannes: “Where is this film? We have talked about it, promoted it; so where is it?” Now that one can actually see the movie in a theater, it remains partially hypothetical, alas, because commerce has effectively and summarily ruled out its most striking attribute. Having been fortunate enough to have seen King Lear at film festivals in Toronto and Rotterdam, I can testify that it has the most remarkable use of Dolby sound I have ever heard in a film. So far, however, to the best of my knowledge, the film has been shown in Dolby almost nowhere else, so you’ll have to take my word for it. The Music Box, which is showing the film locally in a limited one-week engagement, has stereo speakers, but while it’s probably the loveliest movie theater of the 20s still operating in Chicago and has a sound system that is quite adequate for most things, the multiple separations needed for Godard’s split, staggered, and overlapping channels — which play a variety of tricks with distance, space, depth, and layered aural textures — simply aren’t there. Everything returns to normal after Chernobyl. That is, everything but art. Most of the great works are lost, and it is up to people like William Shakespear Junior the Fifth to restore the lost artwork of the human race. He finds strange goings-on at a resort enough to remind him of all the lines of the play, dealing with mob boss Don Learo and his daughter Cordelia, a strange professor named Jean Luc-Godard (sic), who repeatedly xeroxes his hand for no particular reason. He is followed by four humanoid goblins that keep tormenting Cordelia. There is also the gentleman whose girlfriend, Valerie, isn't always visible. Then the film is sent off to New York for Mr. Alien to edit.Jean-Luc Godard's adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy shows the director at his most irreverent and esoteric. Rather than present the play in a traditional manner, Godard instead thrusts a series of characters into a French seaside hotel and lets them run with their own random thoughts and ideas. The actors include Norman Mailer playing himself, Molly Ringwald as Cordelia, Woody Allen as a confused director, and Godard portraying an off-the-wall professor. The film meanders throughout, offering endless monologues, plastic dinosaurs, famous paintings, and an array odd subjects who struggle with the father-daughter conflict of the classic play. Thrown into the mix is Godard's now-standard use of jarring inter-titles, including the film's striking opening credit: "A picture shot in the back." What all of this means is up to the individual viewer to decide, which may, in fact, be Godard's point. By distorting and blurring Shakespeare's original text, he has crafted a mysterious statement about art's ability to mirror and alter reality. Pulling together a cast of noteworthy faces, including Allen, Mailer, Julie Delpy, Burgess Meredith and bad-boy director Leos Carax ("The Lovers on the Bridge" " Pola X"), Godard adds another challenging film to his extensive resume.USA BIDDERS SHIPPING $4.63. INTERNATIONAL $21.99

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End Time: 2024-12-07T05:42:21.000Z

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