Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 2004, 80 min)

In Jean-Luc Godard's new film, "Notre Musique," the history of human endeavor is a song of barbarism. A symphony in three movements or what the director calls three kingdoms, the film is an eschatological journey that, as with the one in Dante's "Divine Comedy," begins in hell. A meditation on our appetite for destruction and an unexpectedly mellow, if nevertheless provocative, view of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, "Notre Musique" sticks mostly to the narrative straight and narrow. Mr. Godard treads on dangerous ground by linking the historical suffering of Jews and the Palestinians, but his sympathy for both people is so manifest, his sense of history so deep, that the film defies reductive readings. All that seems clear, finally, is that there can be no one right side amid so much wrong. - Manohla Davis, NYTimes 11/24/04