The Image Book

Name: The Image Book
Genre: Drama
Released: January 25, 2019
Duration: 84 min
Rating: 76
Cast: Buster Keaton, Dimitri Basil, Jean-Luc Godard

2019

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 22 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 5 Ratings

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5.8

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The Image Book

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Movie Details & Credits

Kino Lorber | Release Date: January 25, 2019 | Not Rated

Starring: Buster Keaton, Dimitri Basil, Jean-Luc Godard

Summary: Do you still remember how, long ago, we trained our thoughts? Most often we'd start from a dream. We wondered how, in total darkness, colours of such intensity could emerge within us. In a soft, low voice. Saying great things. Surprising, deep and accurate matters. Image and words. Like a bad dream written on a stormy night. Under westernDo you still remember how, long ago, we trained our thoughts? Most often we'd start from a dream. We wondered how, in total darkness, colours of such intensity could emerge within us. In a soft, low voice. Saying great things. Surprising, deep and accurate matters. Image and words. Like a bad dream written on a stormy night. Under western eyes. The lost paradises. War is here.… Expand

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Genre(s): Drama

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 84 min

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

100

David Davidson

Jan 24, 2019

The Image Book is worth seeing if only as an aesthetic experience – to let its images and sounds wash over you – while also offering itself up as an object to reflect on. Read full review

Ty Burr

Mar 1, 2019

Like much of Godard’s recent work, The Image Book is a rumination on art, politics, history, and mankind’s eternal folly disguised as a cinematic collage. It’s plotless but it has shape; random but with purpose. After initially fighting the movie, one might find oneself giving into its flow, the visuals scudding across one’s retina, the assemblage of quotes and mournful pensees on the soundtrack seducing one into following along in its wake. Read full review

Liam Lacey

Jan 28, 2019

Coherence was hard to establish but the memory prompts, the lurid colourization and off-beat editing held the attention. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

May 18, 2018

Our world, in The Image Book, has finally caught up to Jean-Luc Godard’s doom-laden dream of it. He seems to be saying that we all have a choice: to change it, or to sit back in our TV armchairs and watch. Read full review

Richard Whittaker

Mar 6, 2019

True, few of the cutup crew ever had the depth of knowledge or stylistic panache that Godard – one of the last remaining masters of the 20th century's most vibrant art forms – brings to the screen. But then, is The Image Book really a film? Godard himself has re-engineered it as an art installation, to be shown on a TV with speakers surrounding it, and that would probably be a better home. Read full review

Sam C. Mac

Jan 20, 2019

It’s through exercising a certain kind of madness that the film connects even at its most disjointed. Read full review

John Bleasdale

May 18, 2018

Everything seems designed to disturb or perhaps infuriate the viewer. Read full review

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User Reviews

AntonioSanAlo99

Jun 25, 2019

A very sensitive point of view with a painfull voice talking about the horrors of today. Godard let us a piece of art, beautiful on its colorful images between the visions of light in a mad mad world opposed to the breaking point on the oversaturated images from movie classics. The image andA very sensitive point of view with a painfull voice talking about the horrors of today. Godard let us a piece of art, beautiful on its colorful images between the visions of light in a mad mad world opposed to the breaking point on the oversaturated images from movie classics. The image and the sound envolve us in a letter of compassion with the world in what we have to live.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Estebaan

Jan 29, 2019

De ser un maestro de la Nouvelle vague a ser un maestro del montaje. Godard consigue transmitir en 90 minutos mas de lo que dan en varios meses de escuela.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

AxeT

Feb 24, 2019

Incoherent, incomprehensible, intolerable dribble by a senile old master French fraud, this might be his ultimate sham. Not only does the less than novice image look atrocious (and we are to believe this is a great artist of cinema?!), but by today's standards you get better conceptualIncoherent, incomprehensible, intolerable dribble by a senile old master French fraud, this might be his ultimate sham. Not only does the less than novice image look atrocious (and we are to believe this is a great artist of cinema?!), but by today's standards you get better conceptual thought and commentary not to mention visual adeptness on the vast amateur junkyard known as YouTube. Free. Anyone liking or making excuses for this ---- is likely as phony and pretentious as the pompous idiots in the jackass critics herd. If there is some brilliant latent conceptual art premise here requiring discovery, it's so hidden as to be pointless and certainly not worth the trouble nor any good will.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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