Rather than telling us a story, Godard is trying, you might say, to implicate us in the story we are already telling ourselves. Between hypnotic, recurring shots of the ocean (not an aid to wakefulness) and oversaturated color video of tourists drifting around the cruise ship, he assembles fragments of recent European history. People recite brief, aphoristic excerpts of texts ranging from Shakespeare to Beckett, Heidegger to Hollywood historian Neal Gabler. Bits of movies begin to appear: "Battleship Potemkin" (the cruise ship docks at Odessa, where the most famous sequence in early cinematic history was shot), John Ford's "Cheyenne Autumn," Rossellini's "Journey to Italy," recent documentaries by Antonioni and Agnès Varda.

¶ 6:46 AM