Notre Musique Movie Review

Subtitled "an essay," Notre Musique (literally "our music") is exactly that -- an almost clinical research paper from the 74-year-old Jean-Luc Godard about how cruel the world is -- particularly in southern Europe and the middle east. The film is basically formless, broken into three segments (Hell, Purgatory, Heaven), each ironic in its own way. Heaven, for example, is set on a beach that is surrounded by a fence and American guards.

Godard isn't exactly swinging for subtlety here, indicting war and the (admittedly real) world police state for the decay of society. Intercutting stock photography with baffling scenes of conversations (an American Indian berates a man sitting at a table in a bombed-out building in Yugoslavia), Godard attempts to paint modern Europe as Dante's various circles of Hell -- but one fears he has lost 90 percent of the audience in the first 10 minutes.