The Past is Never Dead: Amorphous Time in Jean-Luc Godard\u27s \u3ci\u3eNotre Musique\u3c/i\u3e

Jean-Luc Godard is undoubtedly one of the most central figures to cinema. A pioneer of the French New Wave, Godard’s style would go on to influence all realms of the artform. Despite continuing to make films beyond the French New Wave, however, Godard would eventually succumb to his own myth. Godard studies have largely remained focused on these early portions of his career that are so well remembered, ranging from 1960 to 1968. While in more recent times, Godard’s post-68 filmography has received more scholarly notice, there still exists a discrepancy of attention between Godard’s latest films and his earlier period. Specifically, I refer to Godard’s films of the new millennium following his landmark video-essay epic History of Cinema (1998). These films, beginning with In Praise of Love (2001), offer new and radical examples of film aesthetics. My goal here is, thus, two-fold. I first want to address the scholarly studies surrounding Godard to point towards why Godard has seemed to fall out of favor in relation to his development as a filmmaker. I second want to discuss what Godard’s films of the new millennium can offer us. Namely, how Godard employs, within cinema, Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze’s theories on time. Subsequently, I’ll be analyzing Godard’s Our Music to show how Godard uses these theories to discuss concepts surrounding cinema, history, memory, trauma, and languag