King Lear (Criterion) 03/25 Blu-ray (Rental)

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. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES New 2K digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack Audio recording of the 1987 Cannes Film Festival press conference, featuring director Jean-Luc Godard New interviews with Richard Brody, author of Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, and actors Molly Ringwald and Peter Sellars English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing PLUS: An essay by Brody