The unifying power of images

Jean-LUC GODARD structures “Notre Musique,” his profound and challenging meditation on war, into Dante’s three Kingdoms: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. In confronting war on many levels -- visceral, intellectual, political, philosophical, cultural -- he creates a film of flowing, redemptive beauty and poetry, at once immediate yet classic in its simplicity of form. Godard, who turns 74 today, remains the major film iconoclast of his time -- fresh, confounding, sometimes maddening and endlessly provocative. And this time, the surprise is that he is even a bit optimistic.

Godard represents Hell with a dynamic collage comprising images of war through the ages culled from old movies and newsreels: Weaponry and uniforms may change, but the carnage remains eternal. Virtually all the clips are scenes of battle, but the one clip that leaps out is that of the apocalyptic atomic age climax of Robert Aldrich’s “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955).

Hell and Heaven serve as prologue and epilogue to the main part of the film, which is the hourlong Purgatory and is set in Sarajevo, site of a European Literary Encounters conference in which Godard himself appears, invited to lecture on “The Text and the Image.” He weaves in actual literary figures, such as Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo and Arab poet Mahmoud Darwich, with fictional characters. Most important of these are an Israeli journalist, Judith Lerner (Sarah Adler), and an Israeli student, Olga Brodsky (Nade Dieu).

Judith, who has come to Sarajevo hoping “to see a place where reconciliation seems possible,” eagerly makes contact with the French ambassador (Simon Eine) in Sarajevo, for during World War II he hid her grandparents in Vichy France, and her grandmother gave birth to Judith’s mother during this time. She would like an interview with him, focusing on the man, not the diplomat, and dealing with psychology and ethics; better yet, she would like to arrange a conversation between him and her grandfather, who has a rich friend who could have it transcribed and published.

The ambassador proves reluctant, clearly for political reasons, and takes leave of her, saying, “The dream of the individual is to be two, the dream of the state is to be one.” Judith later encounters Darwich, who in a paradoxical vein tells her how the Israelis have defined the Palestinians and made them “famous.” Godard makes an oblique parallel between the fate of the Jews in World War II and the exile of Palestinians.

Olga, in the meantime, attends Godard’s lecture, which cuts to the core of what Godard seems to be suggesting with “Notre Musique” -- that while language divides people and nations, images may unite them. This is surely the effect of this visual film despite Godard’s characteristic flood of aphorisms and declarations. “Notre Musique” (Our Music), Godard suggests, emerges from a list of conflicting forces headed by “death” and “light.” Such opposing movements are eternal, and Judith is drawn to the light as Olga is to darkness. “They are the two faces of truth,” he explains. “They are our music.”

Sarajevo is in a sense the star of the film, a city of elegance and spaciousness, some of it miraculously untouched by war, other sections revealing long stretches of ruined buildings. Yet through the lens of cinematographer Julien Hirsch’s camera, Godard confers a unifying beauty upon its entirety, heightened by Godard’s always inspired selections of music.

A key sequence is set in the splendid hulk of the city’s grand 19th century Byzantine-like public library. Inside Goytisolo recites his poetry, which is not subtitled, while two Native Americans curse the legacy of the white man to an uncomprehending man at a table checking out books from a pile in the library’s burned-out, immense main hall.

While no one is communicating successfully with anyone else in the library, the building in all its blighted grandeur quietly and powerfully symbolizes at once mankind’s yearning for knowledge and civilization and propensity for destruction. At the end of Purgatory, Godard learns of the fate of Olga upon her return to Israel. It’s worth noting that in treating Olga as so singular an Israeli in her dedication to the cause of peace, Godard may offend some Jews. In any event, Purgatory is dense with thought-provoking encounters and ideas.

Heaven for the world looks like the Garden of Eden, where Olga is seen strolling along a stream through a forest -- only to come upon a chain-link fence guarded by U.S. Marines with rifles at the ready -- a darkly droll, inspired notion quite typical of Godard. In this sequence, which features a few others happily enjoying the countryside, Godard shows Olga sitting at the edge of a lake, sharing an apple with a soldier. Godard ends “Notre Musique” with this coda: “It was a fine clear day. You could see a long way off. But not as far as Olga had gone.”

*

‘Notre Musique’

MPAA rating: Unrated

Times guidelines: Complex mature themes, war movie violence

Sarah Adler...Judith Lerner

Nade Dieu...Olga Brodsky

Simon Eine...French Ambassador Naville

Jean-Luc Godard...As himself

Mahmoud Darwich...As himself

A Wellspring release. Writer-director Jean-Luc Godard. Artistic director Anne-Marie Mieville. Producers Alain Sarde, Ruth Waldburger. Cinematographer Julien Hirsch. In French, English and Spanish, with English subtitles.

Exclusively at the Nuart through Thursday, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 281-8223.