"Notre Musique" is the latest film from Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most brilliant, subversive, and revolutionary architects of the late 50s/early ‘60s French New Wave.

Godard created some of the most intellectual and ground breaking avant-garde films such as "Breathless." "Contempt," "Weekend," and the more recent, "Histories du Cinema."

He has also done some extremely dull works, which show contempt for the audience, such as "King Lear" and "Hail Mary." "Notre Musique" belongs in the first category. "Notre Musique" doesn’t contain many shocking images or jarring jump cuts, and compared to his other works, it’s almost accessible.

Like many of his films, "Notre Musique" is idiosyncratic, thought provoking, and somewhat baffling. It’s a Metafilm, which meditates on the nature of war. The film also features exhanges between fictional characters and real people, such as the Arab poet Mahmoud Darwick, and even Godard himself appears.

It doesn’t really have a traditional or structured story line, but the film does follow two parallel stories of two women: one is drawn to darkness and one to light.

"Notre Musique" is a visual collage with certain recurrent and overlapping themes. Godard seems to be saying that the only way to present a fragmented world is with visual/audio fragments.

One of the highlights of the film is a scholarly discussion on the use of the shot and reverse shot, which could have come out of a college lecture. Native Americans also appear in the film in their traditional garb looking mournful, reminding us of the cost of "progress." At times, this comes off as highly condescending.

"Notre Musique" is difficult to classify and it boldly fuses together many different genre film categories. It combines philosophic dialog exchanges, fictional narratives, real documentary footage, and scenes from classic fictional films that Godard admires, such as Coppola’s "Apocalypse Now," "Zulu," and Aldrich’s "Kiss Me Deadly."

It’s only natural that Godard would pay homage to filmmaker, Robert Aldrich. His "Kiss Me Deadly" was far more influential in Europe than in America, and it helped inspire the French New Wave.

Godard’s stylistic choices are just as unusual. "Notre Musique" was shot on video, and abruptly leaps back and forth from color to black and white.

The film is divided into sections titled "hell", purgatory" and "heaven," which correspond to the sections in Dante’s "The Divine Comedy." This is not the first film to take its structure from a poetry text. Pasolini modeled the circles of perversions in "Salo" after Dante’s vision of hell.

"Notre Musique’s" slow pace and lack of action will make the film difficult going for casual viewers, but art film aficionados should enjoy it. Godard may not be at his creative peak, but he is still a visionary voice to be reckoned with.