Weekend (1968)

Jean-Luc Godard and Luis Buñuel enjoyed an ardent misanthropic duel in the '60s and '70s, but who won is anyone's call. Godard's Weekend lays down the trump in a harrowing and darkly funny allegory in which social mores fray along political lines. Played out in a metafilm in which characters question their own reality, a morally bankrupt Parisian couple tries to leave the city on a much-loathed country holiday with the wife's parents. Along the way, endless traffic jams, sudden violence, and vistas of gory car crashes underscore their corrupted values. Their lethal encounter with the in-laws and kidnap by an anarchic band of radical cannibals finds the couple--and presumably "decent" society with them--reverting to a nasty primitivism. The idea is of course that the bored, apathetic heart of the bourgeoisie is never far from acting out its most homicidal fantasies. --Alan E. Rapp Amazon.com essential video

one of the -very few- Godard's I like

WEEK-END

Jean-Luc Godard's WEEK-END is certainly beyond the usual egocentrism of Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) movies. In other terms, while the formers (including his BREATHLESS) deal with personal characteristic themes, WEEK-END is dominated by philosophical, cultural, social, and geopolitical themes. It's a franc satire of the Parisian upper-class but more importantly it's a dark view of the modern civilization's self decay, materialism, apathy, terrorism, and violence. And though the movie has the protagonists -like most nouvelle vague- as "anti-heroes", it's more adequately classified as a post-modern work, approaching very similar (if not the same) territories explored mainly by Bergman (movies like Shame, Passion of Anna) and to a lesser width in Antonioni's trilogy in that same era (mid-late 60's). While Bergman approached these themes in a sinister, philosophical (i.e. Bergmanesque) manner, Godard used his usual raw humor adding some surrealistic escapades in a direct tribute to Bunuel (even a section of the movie is titled EXTERMINATING ANGELS).
Symbolism is also a crucial element in this work: Cars -a classical Godard fetish- are all over the place, in all possible states (turned upside down, exploded, dysfunctional...) as a metaphor for "modernism", the domination of the three main French national colors (blue/red/white) is obvious...etc

Technically speaking, on a first glimpse, Jean-Luc Godard's WEEKEND may seem like a regular Film Noir centered on an upper-class Parisian couple. The initial scenes have a dark-lighting quality and a remarkable over-use (on purpose) of a very Hollywoodish , overzealous, melodramatic musical score.
One of my favorite scenes in this movie (and even in all of Godard's) is the traffic scene that takes place after fifteen minutes of the start and lasts for good ten minutes. Godard staged the complex scene beautifully; his camera tracks the main car, spans in and out smartly.
Godard's love for experimentation is hard to miss here: characters unrelated to the main narration emerge from different times (the French revolution) break the fourth wall by talking to the camera directly. A pianist actually playing live -non dubbed- Mozart in a farm. The director interrupts the narration very frequently by projecting titles that play on words and with multi-layered symbolism, he wanted to make it clear that it's only a movie. I personally enjoyed those "word plays" initially but half-way through the movie they exceeded my patience, but again maybe it's because I'm aware that I'm dealing with a Godard and usually I'm very impatient when watching his works.

Surprisingly, the US DVD edition (NEW YORKER VIDEO) isn't bad at all, with a very useful audio commentary by critic David Sterritt, an interview with the movie cinematographer Raoul Coutard, and input from director Mike Figgis.

I think WEEK-END is one of the director's best. I enjoyed it more than his other highly- acclaimed works (Alphaville, Contempt, Tout Va Bien, Breathless....), and I recommend it even to whoever is -like me- not a fan of Godard at all.


October 10, 2008

Into the Wild

Jean-Luc Godard's "Weekend" has reached its four decade milestone. It's a surrealistic cinematic trip into Godard's commentary on then-contemporary French society. It doesn't have a straightforward plot; one assumes Godard didn't mean to have one.

"Weekend" begins with a couple enjoying double entendres in a drive in the country. They find themselves in an endless traffic jam, surrounded by hippies, Marxists, and those living the primitive live. It's a commentary on consumerism--but it's also a commentary on communism as well. Individuals are sacrificed to the community-literally-and the upper-class wife chows down on her husband,while a young woman is garnished with eggs. Communism consumes itself. Godard saw European society degenerating; he was prophetic. He critiques capitalism and communism alike.

"Weekend" is an afternoon trip... for the mind. August 23, 2008

Very nice

Don't buy this if you want a "story"- kind of movie, where everything makes sense. Some things in this movie make sense, some don't, and the story plays a minor role. There is nothing pretentious about it, it's just the kind of movie Godard likes to make. I don't agree with his political statements, but still liked the movie. It is full of interesting ideas, images and music. Compared to Godard's "A bout de souffle" (Breathless), "Weekend" left a greater impression on me, because it is not just about the main characters, but about society as a whole. The trip into the country of two main characters (with bad intent) turns into a metaphor for the end of civilization. And if I didn't like anything else about it, the actress would still have captured my eye the entire movie. As with most of Godard movies, afterward I wonder: "Why do I like this?", and Mike Figgis (extra features on the dvd) puts it in words very well, which I find helpful. The comments also point out some of the things that are otherwise easy to miss. June 10, 2008

Godard's Weekend: a treasure "found on a scrap heap."

Influential French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard was at his cinematic best during the early '60s (during which time he made Breathless (1960), Band of Outsiders (1964), Pierrot le Fou (1965), among other great films), a creative period ending with his equally colorful and political film, Weekend (1967), which marked the "End of Cinema" for Godard. He called Weekend "a film adrift in the cosmos," and "a film found on a scrap heap." It tells the story of a Parisian married couple, Roland and Corrine (played by French television stars, Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne), who leave on a weekend journey across the French countryside to collect an inheritance. After a memorable 10-minute scene in which they are stuck in a traffic jam littered with violent car crashes as they leave the city--(this scene is reason enough to experience this film, in that it conveys Godard's sense of boredom, disorientation, and frustration with the times)--Roland and Corrine are confronted by the French bourgeoisie, along with a bizarre cast of characters including Emily Brontë, Saint-Just, Alexandre Dumas, hippies, and a pianist playing Mozart in a farmyard. Weekend is a black comedy in the form of a social allegory. Godard compared his 60s' work to rattling his metal cup against the bars of his cell, and Weekend may be considered his one last attempt to wake up his audience from its contemptuous bourgeois lifestyle.

G. Merritt April 11, 2008

Passe...

It's been 4 decades and viewing the political notions in Weekend had for me the feel of the stale dialogue that comes from aging activists who have built a lifetime's ethos and idealogy constructed around insights and ideas they had when they were 19 years old. No matter that history may have demonstrated how wrong-headed and downright misinformed they may have been, they remain true believers. Mind you, I have no idea what Jean Luc Godard believes today, but I believe he was part of that French intellectual class that embraced some, if not all, of the "revolutionary" rubbish of the 60's and 70's that passed for brilliance in its day.

This film is a product of the late 60's when intellectual France, much as intellectual America, was being galvanized into action by opposition to the Viet Nam War and by a romantic notion of the Youth Generation as torch bearers for a new age of enlightenment. Godard distances himself from the nonsense his young revolutionaries spout, so I don't know what part, if any, he embraces or rejects. Godard specialists can guide you there.

What I see on film, is how tired hot-button political issues become with time and the perspective of history. Likewise, how utterly mundane what once might have been shocking or "revolutionary" becomes with that same time and distance.

I always brace myself when I hear the word "absurdist" applied to any work of art. That term can cover the range of the razor sharp satire of a Voltaire to the inane shenanigans of the Three Stooges. At least the Stooges are straightforward and un-pretentious. What we get in a much absurdist art is a lot of muck thrown against a wall to see if any sticks. But with the pretense! Artsy fartsy stoogery.

Director Mike Figgis in the extras says Godard's films inspired because they were "full of ideas". Yep. You will have to judge whether any of them are worth your time to sort out as you follow this meandering tale.

The film starts out well, when after a pornographic monologue (no doubt shocking in 1967) we are introduced to a despicable bourgeois couple, intent on murder of rich relatives and unbeknownst to themselves, each other. They are vile and amusing, and yes there soon comes the famous endless traffic jam, and it is a nice conceit. What follows after that, I must confess, increasingly bored and irritated me. An occasional aside or moment was fine, but most of it was about as interesting as having an insurance policy explained, or the subtleties of Gallic political theory.

Godard is an acquired taste apparently. I have tried. I find some interest in Breathless, Le Petit Soldad, and several others, but the deep regard some have for his work is lost on me. He may have broken new ground, no doubt. But there is a certain French existential ennui that breathes beneath his films that just doesn't appeal to me. It may be a perfecly valid viewpoint, but it cloys. His embrace of film history while questioning its relevance gets old fast. I must try some of his later works, because what I have sampled from the early stuff seems terribly dated and trivial today.

September 15, 2007

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