#1249: GODARD, Jean-Luc: King Lear (1987)

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GODARD, Jean-Luc (France)
King Lear [1987]
Spine #1249
Blu-ray


Jean-Luc Godard’s first English-language narrative feature is a radical anti-adaptation of Shakespeare’s masterpiece that finds the visionary filmmaker continuing to reinvent the syntax of cinema. In a post-Chernobyl world where culture has been lost, William Shakespeare Jr. V (played by theater director Peter Sellars) attempts to reconstruct his ancestor’s play, abetted by a cast that includes Molly Ringwald, Burgess Meredith, and Godard himself as a crazed avant savant. Through a dense layering of sounds, images, and ideas about everything from language to the economics of filmmaking to the very meaning of art in a ruined world, Godard fashions a puckish and profound metacinematic riddle to be endlessly analyzed, argued over, and savored.

90 minutes
2.0 Surround
Color
1:37:1
Criterion Release 2025


Director/Writer

Jean-Luc Godard was 47 when he directed King Lear.

Other Godard films in the Collection:

#408: Breathless (1960)
The Film

a

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Commentary

Video tribute

Documentary 1

Documentary 2

Documentary 3

Controversial altered ending

Theatrical trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

By Spine #

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