Goodbye to Language talks its way to top of US film…

Goodbye to Language talks its way to top of US film critics' poll for 2014

Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language has been named as the best film of 2014 by the National Society of Film Critics.

Godard’s cryptic 3D film essay narrowly defeated the Richard Linklater-directed Boyhood by 25 votes to 24, in a poll conducted by the critics’ group that draws its membership from some of the US’s most distinguished names in the field, including the New Yorker’s David Denby and Richard Brody, TV Guide’s Lisa Schwarzbaum and Film Comment’s Amy Taubin and Michael Sragow.

Boyhood, however, was recognised by the society giving its best director award to Linklater, and its best supporting actress award to Patricia Arquette. The JMW Turner biopic Mr Turner, directed by Mike Leigh, was also handed two awards: best actor for Timothy Spall and best cinematography.

Goodbye to Language’s success was something of a surprise, as the 84-year-old maverick director’s film has not enjoyed universal acclaim: the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw described it as “an uncompromising and exasperating 70-minute cine-collage ... composed of fragments of ideas, shards of disillusionment” in a three-star review on its premiere at Cannes in May 2014, where it won the third place jury prize. After a long festival run, Goodbye to Language achieved only a minimal theatrical release in the US, and went straight to DVD in the UK. It has so far not registered on the major US awards circuit, having been overlooked for the Golden Globes and being passed over as France and Switzerland’s Academy award nominees, in favour of Saint Laurent and The Circle respectively.

The National Society of Film Critics tends to prioritise world and art cinema in its deliberations, having given its top award to Inside Llewyn Davis in 2013, Amour in 2012 and Melancholia in 2011.