Over time, as he has developed and refined his own cinematic language, he has seemed increasingly indifferent to his audience. That has regularly been held against him, which says more about the state of corporate-dominated popular culture than him; complexity, difficulty, experimentation and opacity aren’t failings. And while even loyalists may find “The Image Book” sometimes rough going, it is a fascinating object, partly because Mr. Godard, now 87, seems to be sifting through a lifetime of images and ideas (on war and more war) amid shocks of beauty and horror.

Another standout is Christian Petzold’s moody, beguiling, formally bold “Transit,” about a German refugee (an excellent Franz Rogowski) who’s trying to flee to North America from Nazi-occupied France. Set in a past that looks just like the present — everything is contemporary, clothing included — the story turns history into an existential maze from which few seem destined to escape. Also recommended are the latest from Hong Sang-soo: “Grass” and the quietly elegiac “Hotel by the River.” It isn’t entirely clear what “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” the new Joel and Ethan Coen movie, is doing squeezed into the main slate, but it is a lot of fun to watch, until it isn’t.

As is true of any festival, this one has some head-scratchers, including “Asako I & II,” a bland drama about a young woman, a cipher as droopy as the movie, whose heart breaks when her lover walks out. Years later, she falls for a second guy who looks just like the first and is played by the same actor with a shorter haircut. Equally unconvincing is “Ray & Liz,” a stale slice of British miserablism in which every buzzing insect and human agony is lovingly lit and photographed.