Adieu au langage 2014

Bill Stamets, Chicago Sun-Times: Jean-Luc Godard is the acknowledged mascot, if not master, of intellectual cinema. In "Goodbye to Language 3D" the 84-year-old auteur... reprises his longstanding suspicion that words are worthless. Read more

Wesley Morris, Grantland: This is a master filmmaker whose interest in form and its instruments have kept him vital. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Lots of luck figuring any of this out before dozing off. Read more

Scott Foundas, Variety: The title says 'Goodbye,' but Jean-Luc Godard says hello with a stimulating and playful meditation on the state of the world and the possibilities of the image. Read more

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club: As far as purely aesthetic experiences go, I doubt anything I'll see anywhere this year will beat Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye To Language. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: I'm attaching four stars more out of helplessness than critical acumen, by the way; if the film is beyond language, it's certainly beyond a traditional rating system. Read more

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader: At 84, Godard is still looking for new ways to express himself, though he thinks it harder than ever to achieve meaningful interpersonal communication in the information age. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Shooting on various low- and medium-grade digital cameras, Godard turns "Goodbye to Language" into a rumination on memory, communication, everyday life and sexual tension. Read more

Joe McGovern, Entertainment Weekly: 3-D is the ideal toy for an old enfant terrible like Godard to play with. Packed with dazzling images, the film makes 3-D feel like something brand-new to the medium. Read more

Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times: Anyone interested in the possibilities of the moviegoing experience - what can happen in a dark theater - owes it to themselves to say hello to "Goodbye to Language." Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: [Godard's] 3-D technique is the first advance in deep-focus camerawork since the heyday of Orson Welles; it lends the settings a sumptuous intimacy as it restores the astonishment of sheer perception to the art of the cinema. Read more

Mark Jenkins, NPR: Godard can't stop himself from exploring new ways to make pictures. He seems to enjoy doing so almost as much as he enjoys frustrating the expectations of those who still want a movie to have a beginning, a middle and an end, in that order. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, New York Daily News: At 83, Godard continues to push boundaries, even if his latest movie may baffle all but the most devoted film theorists. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: The everyday world is made vivid and strange, rendered in a series of sketches and compositions by an artist with an eccentric and unerring eye. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: It joins the very short list of intriguing experiments in 21st-century 3-D, which otherwise comprises Werner Herzog's "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" and Wim Wenders' "Pina." Read more

Thomas Lee, San Francisco Chronicle: "Goodbye to Language" seems like an appropriate title if it's meant to suggest that logic and sanity have completely disappeared from this world. Read more

Daniel Engber, Slate: For better or for worse, Godard has traded roller coaster thrills for a carnival of gimmicks. Read more

Jon Frosch, The Atlantic: Goodbye to Language is far more stimulating visually and aurally than it is intellectually, but at 83, Godard is still pushing the form. I'll take it. Read more

John Semley, Globe and Mail: Compared with Captain America or whatever, Goodbye is "revolutionary." But so what? Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: It leaves me almost speechless, slightly mystified, strangely wistful and perhaps with a mild case of eye strain, but delighted nonetheless. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: The innovation raises the spirits, but gives you a splitting headache. That's how it is with Godard, who revels in his dreams so willfully that the results are frequently frustrating and opaque. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice: It probably can't be called a great film, but it's a teasing and exhilarating one, one that flirts with despair but somehow, I think, comes out on the side of joy. Read more

Michelle Orange, Village Voice: The experience of being eluded by Jean-Luc Godard has its consolations, foremost among them the 83-year-old director's prerogative to elude. Read more

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture: A film you need to see again should be a film you want to see again, and the oblique beauty of Goodbye to Language, shot in 3-D, has a tractor-beam-like pull. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Throughout this enigmatic film's short running time, I couldn't for the life of me make out what Godard was trying to say. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: A film that's stuffed with language, its title notwithstanding. Read more