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

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

The Other Red Meat

Of recent I have watched a number of the films of Jean-Luc Godard. There have been some that I have enjoyed quite a bit--Masculin, féminin--and some that I believe I could have gone without watching--Pierrot le fou--however, being that I am fascinated with the French New Wave movement and cinema from the 1960s in genera, I shall continue to plug away watching Godard's films. After writing my review on Masculin, féminin, an acquaintance suggested that I give Godard's 1967 film Weekend a try. Now, I have heard of this film before in association with a film titles Fando and Lis, a film which I consider to be one of the worst films ever created, so I wasn't too keen on watching the film, but since I can watch the film for free in my university's library, I decided to give it a shot.

After watching the first twenty minutes or so of the film, I understood why it was listed with the atrocity I mentioned above. Weekend revolves around the couple Corinne and Roland, a not so loving couple who constantly wish that the other will die. However, they are more concerned with the deaths of Corinne's parents whose demise will give them a sizeable amount of money. Having poisoned Corinne's father slower over a long period of time, it seems that finally the old man's death is imminent so the couple heads off to the family home to prevent the will from being changed at the last moment. However, things will not fall into place quite so easily for Corinne and Roland. Instead of a quick trip, they encounter car wreck after car wreck each which impedes their progress. If that wasn't bad enough they even encounter cannibal guerillas. So is life.

I have heard that two of the most common reactions to Godard's Weekend are, one, fuller realization of the power of cinema as an art and utter boredom. I fell somewhere in between, meaning, I was bored, but I could appreciate some of Godard's objectives in making this film. Like many of his other films from around this same time period, Weekend has a highly political edge and it tackles such issues as the bourgeoisie versus the working class and the struggles of minorities versus the majority, but it is also evident that Godard had become a bit pessimistic by the time he made this film because parts of it seem to mock his previous films. The only people whom I could recommend this film to are those who are fans of the French New Wave and, while keeping that in mind, I can almost assure the viewer that he or she will not want to hear a car's horn for a very long time afterward. May 26, 2007

expect to be both entertained and bored

this film is full of good ideas. but theyre unstructured and ultimately unengaging. I like good ideas so im being generous with my four star rating.

like alphaville - i wish a daring film maker would have the guts to do a remake and develop this film until it reaches its true potential.

this film is more like a brilliant sketchpad than an actual work of art.

P.S. i noticed that the sex monologue was "inspired" by Bataille's Story of the Eye. and there were other areas seemingly inspired by Maldoror and Shaw's Man and SUperman. May 1, 2007

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