King Lear (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray) [USA]

C.C. 95

The Snarky Assassin
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Sep 10, 2014
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The Land, OHIO - U.S.A.
Release Date: February 11, 2025
Prices and Links:
Criterion- $31.96
Amazon- $39.95
DiabolikDVD- $29.99
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Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Writers: Jean-Luc Godard, Norman Mailer, Peter Sellars, William Shakespeare
Starring: Woody Allen, Leos Carax, Julie Delpy, Jean-Luc Godard, Norman Mailer
  • United States, France
  • 1987
  • 90 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.37:1
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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.

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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; actor Molly Ringwald; and actor and coscreenwriter Peter Sellars
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by Brody