The Criterion Collection

Outside of rare retrospective screenings, for decades now King Lear has largely been seen, if at all, via low-quality bootlegs. Criterion’s transfer, sourced from a 2K restoration, is a revelation. The painterly beauty of Sophie Maintigneux’s cinematography and its heavy emphasis on naturalistic tones of blues and greens can finally be appreciated, and scenes in dim interiors sport deep black levels with no visible crushing or halo artifacts. Detail is fine enough to make out the faint signs of photo reproduction on the film stills and painting scans woven into the montage. Equally impressive is the soundtrack, which flawlessly renders the stereo track of overlapping dialogue, needle drops and ambient sound. The soundtrack is as blatantly artificial as it is immersively impressionistic, and it’s overwhelming to hear it in its full clarity.

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Extras

New Yorker critic Richard Brody, likely the film’s biggest champion in the English-speaking world, contributes both an interview and the booklet essay for Criterion’s release. In both, he makes the case for the film as a Gesamtkunstwerk of Godard’s career while also offering ample insight into the project’s convoluted and enervating production. Brody even obliquely features in the interview with Molly Ringwald, who reminisces about how baffled she was on the set of King Lear and how she came to appreciate the film years later when reading Brody’s Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard. Also interviewed is Peter Sellars, who recalls in depth the strangeness of the production but clearly prides having participated in the project. The disc also comes with audio of a press conference with Godard at its Cannes premiere, in which he’s his usual evasive, irascible, yet always entertaining self.

Overall

Jean-Luc Godard’s long-neglected masterpiece at last receives a proper video release in a stunning A/V transfer that primes the film for overdue rediscovery.