A new Godard always provides material for debate. Has he made a new masterpiece or is it more of the same? For some critics these two extremes amount to the same thing. Of course the old master can look back on many masterpieces and he keeps on filming, apparently untiringly. On the subject of For Ever Mozart most critics were agreed. Serge Toubiana (Cahiers du Cinéma): ‘The most stimulating and heartening film of the moment. In other words a great film, not to say a masterpiece.’ Toubiana also called it a Shakespearian film, with war, violence, language and love. Piers Handling (Toronto Catalogue) wrote that every attempt to describe Godard’s Bosnia film was nothing other than asimplification and reduction.The ‘story’ of the film is indeed complex. Four films in one, without the separate parts necessarily forming one unit. The main theme is the Director who has planned a film but has trouble with the casting. He helps his cousin with the staging of a play by Musset in Sarajevo, but runs away when the actors become involved with the war as it gets closer to Sarajevo. The Director tries to complete the film he was first working on, but he can’t. Juxtaposed with the stories, several reflections, thoughts and insights on themes such as art, politics and film are ventilated.
