King Lear

As the result of a legendary movie deal concluded on a table-napkin (that never mentioned Shakespeare) over a lunch at Cannes with the Israeli film mogul Menahem Golan, Godard’s King Lear is predictably not a costume drama nor a conventional adaptation of the play. Instead, we follow William Shakespeare Jr. the Fifth as he wanders through a post-Chernobyl world trying to restore his ancestor’s play aided by Professor Pluggy, played by Godard himself, with cameos of Leos Carax and Woody Allen. As in Passion, narrative incoherence reigned supreme here with its rich soundtrack truly overpowering the images.