King Lear
Jean-Luc Godard · 1987
Jean-Luc Godard’s 1987 King Lear is a ninety-minute essay-film shot in Switzerland, using only shards of Shakespeare’s text alongside quotations from Weil, Bresson, Woolf, and others. It rejects narrative continuity, linear character arcs, and cinematic convention in favour of repetition, silence, and deliberate disjunction. Funded by Cannon Films and shot alongside denim commercials, it treats money, copyright, and authorship as structural elements. Norman Mailer’s abandoned script and departure mid-production are woven into its fabric. The film is less about Lear than about the conditions under which any cultural work can be made—or remembered—after catastrophe.
