The Cinematheque

3D Presentation

“The best new film I’ve seen this year, and the best 3D film I’ve ever seen … The film seems to me superb, and it gets better after several more viewings.”

David Bordwell

JLG plus 3D adds up, little wonder, to one of the most radical, rule-bending reimaginings of the technique in its sputtering history of deaths and resurrections. Having previewed the yields of his stereoscopic experimentations in the 2013 omnibus 3x3D, Godard unveiled the full scope of his ambitions with Goodbye to Language, a characteristically allusion-dense and elliptically rendered tale of an extramarital affair—twice told with two sets of actors—and a canine named Roxy (Godard and partner Anne-Marie Miéville’s own). Doctorates could be devoted to conquering the film’s surfeit of citations and ideas—the futility of words is a discernible throughline—but it’s the quantum leap in stereoscopy, achieved with cinematographer Fabrice Aragno, that eclipses any intellectual gold-mining. Shot on lo-fi, blown-out digital, Goodbye repurposes 3D’s routine application toward realism, embracing instead its nonfigurative capabilities and, in one revolutionary sequence, the astonishing what-if potential of dislocating its illusory effects.

In French with English subtitles

Video introduction by Blake Williams, a Toronto-based artist, filmmaker, and critic who specializes in stereoscopic media. His most recent 3D film, Laberint Sequences, screened at various 2023 festivals including TIFF, NYFF, and Cinéma du Réel.

“The 3D of past, present, and future; more intimate than spectacular, although the eyes boggle as well as the mind. As revolutionary as Breathless was fifty-four years ago.”

Amy Taubin, Artforum

“The sheer assaultive power of Goodbye to Language makes it Godard’s most vibrant and exciting film for some time.”

Jonathan Romney, Film Comment

“Goodbye to Language is spectacular as well as cerebral, employing 3D in ways I’ve never seen before … [Its] colours combine like paints on an artist’s palette.”

Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader