Week end

Wow, such a polarizing film! It seems everyone either detests this work as something less than terrible or conversely praise it to the heavens. I guess I'm sadly somewhere in between. Having read a bit of theory behind the film before I saw it I won't rehash that here, only state my reaction, for if there's anything this picture cries out for it is a reaction. Well here goes. Parts are horrifying. Far more disturbing than slasher film gore (mostly because the imagery being dispensed with aren't human). Parts are boring (and NOT the ten minute tracking shot which was a gem. Has anyone even been in a traffic jam before? Godard merely replicates it and all the while makes you wonder where that couple's car is heading, and what could have caused such a jam). Parts don't make sense, mostly because I don't think they are supposed to. That is their purpose, to disrupt sense. And, surprisingly something that nobody on here has mentioned, parts are very very funny. Okay, so perhaps not everyone will laugh as often as I did, but please, lighten up kids, Godard is making fun of us, its healthy to laugh at oneself once and a while. And some of his film is just fun too. Okay, now go back to the other reviews of how hopelessly miserable you'll feel after watching this, or how much of a religious awakening this will be if your down with the art-house film-erati. Definitely worth seeing.

I gave this movie a 10 out of 10. I expect many people would feel hard-pressed to give it a 2 on the same scale, and I honestly wouldn't blame those who do. "Week End" is a machine built to provoke, and perhaps irritation as well as admiration can be a measure of such a machine's success.

For myself, I love it. It boils with anger, frustration, and insane energy. In one sense, it approaches film like the Cubists approached painting, breaking down images, ideas, characters and plot into startlingly photographed, almost geometric segments. But where the Cubists were to content to experiment with form Godard's instincts stay furiously political; it's as though an early Picasso had been commandeered and refitted by George Grosz.

Arrogance is not always a drawback, as rock and roll fans know-- and "Week End" is a terribly arrogant film. The director trashes every convention that he can think of. It's all thrown together-- music, dialogue, on-screen text, unvarnished political theory, frightening violence-- onto a bare hook of a plot: a young, apparently soulless couple go on a week-end trip in the middle of what appears to be the end of Western civilization. Without apologies Godard throws this mess on the table and asks the rest of us, "What have you got to match it?"

Sadly, not much. Cinema as an art has regressed rather than advanced since this film was released. (Godard himself stalled after "Week End.") Despite the rise of independently funded, non-Hollywood films in the past decade, no one seems ready to dare the sort of experimentation with what film could be that was begun in the 60s, and this is a sad thing. The films made by Godard at the height of his powers are all the more precious now. "Week End" is a document of a time when film mattered. It is an artifact, but it would only be dated if it had been surpassed. It does not rest in peace.

Jean-Luc Godard will always be Jean-Luc Godard. Either you love his films or hate them. Either you love the guy or hate him. Now, with "Weekend" (1967, France), I just don't know what to make of him (not that this is not what I generally feel whenever I see one of his films).

At the film's opening credits, it's outrightly declared that it's "a film adrift in cosmos". Godard must've meant that seriously, for once you've entered the film's universe, you're in for one wreck of a viewing experience. This is one chaotic universe--and I meant to say it in a pleasurable way!

To attempt to state the plot of the film could only be a disservice to it--though this is not to say that the film doesn't have a "plot"! To attempt to extract the essence of the film might only be a disgrace to it--though this is not to say that the film doesn't have an "essence"! To attempt to map out Godard's agenda in making the film could just turn out to be a mockery of the filmmaker--though this is not to say that the film doesn't have an "agenda"!

The plot? A couple goes on a weekend trip to their parents' house to execute a sinister plan....The essence? The decadence of bourgeois values, the arbitrary yet natural progression of fate, and the transformative power of social awakening....The agenda? For Godard to become increasingly political and to continue on deconstructing the traditional film narrative methods, and thus "alienating" the film audience.... (Much like, theater-wise, Bertolt Brecht had increasingly become political in his succeeding plays while at the same time had continued on employing "alienating" theatrical devices.)

But all of these takes a side-step to give way to the overwhelming chaos, arbitrariness and "playful" senselessness that truly characterize "Weekend". Or, perhaps, the "means" are designed to be of service to the "end".

This chaotic cosmos is potently embedded in the viewers' sensibilities by way of that jaw-droppingly sustained 10-minute dolly shot of a horrendous countryside traffic jam (the "mother of all traffic jams", as one film reviewer ably put it) that the above-quoted couple encountered on their way to Oinville (their parents' place). After that, the quirky and amoral couple would continue to meet along the way a whole lot of "hindrances" to their destination, most of which Godard leisurely takes his time to stage (as what he did, say, in "Alphaville" and "Band of Outsiders").

On the one hand, these "hindrances" appear to be a carry-over from the previous traffic jam that the couple went through (those car wrecks and corpses). On the other hand, they are intended to be an overt display of the filmmaker's alienating techniques (like at one point where the couple gets to encounter a pair of "fictional", "literary" characters and the man starts to blurt out how "trashy" the film is for all they meet are "crazy characters"--how hilarious!). On the other still, they serve as a venue for Godard's explicit political views, the expressiveness is of such a way that this may take the form of direct camera address (like in that long scene where these two "brothers" pour out their thoughts and sentiments about the oppression in South Africa and the discrimination of the blacks).

Now that I have mentioned things political, I'm not sure if it's even necessary to mention the political "awakening" that came upon the woman after the couple was kidnapped by a band of Communist guerrillas. The scenes comprising this specific episode tread the line of being absurd, grotesque and outrageous that seeing them can't even make one believe them.

The online Premiere magazine listed "Weekend" as one of the "25 Most Dangerous Movies". "Dangerous" in the sense of these films challenge our "bedrock notions" of what it is that we normally see in the movies and how we see them (with films like "A Clockwork Orange", "Eraserhead", "Requiem for a Dream", "Freaks"). It's a question of theme and method. Well, it's not that JLG's films have not always turned our viewing experience upside down. But when compared to, let's say, the ebullient fatalism of "Breathless", "Weekend" in fact exudes an apocalyptic melange and an irresolvable recklessness that make it rather an uncomfy fare.

The irony is that even if this Godard film is labeled as "dangerous", it's still worth a repeat viewing, much like all the other films that made it to the Premiere mag's list. It's one thing to say that this film poses danger and it's another to say that this film is "painful to watch twice". It's something that's worthy of another article--and actually there's an available list for that already!

Jean-Luc Godard's cruelly ironic portrayal of the apocalypse of Western civilization through automobile accidents and petty greed effectively marked the breaking point in his career; after this, he retreated into an overtly political militant cinema for most of the late sixties/early seventies, following some of the leads here first introduced. Whatever plot there is is slowly deconstructed and disassembled throughout the film's length, as a weekend drive by cynical bourgeois couple Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne turns into a surrealist, comic nightmare of roadkill, class struggle, murder and politics as they have to face the progressively more chaotic consequences of their blind ambition and desire for power. Strikingly photographed in long one-take tracking shots, the most celebrated of which showing an apparently endless traffic jam, the film seems to defend the revolt of the proletariat until, by the end, the bourgeois wife is down with the revolutionary Liberation Front of the Seine and Oise, in a cruelly ironic plot twist that literally underlines the cannibal side of politics. With hindsight, many say that "Week End", released in 1967, effectively announced the May '68 urban uprisings in Paris and marked the beginning of Godard's politically active phase; personally, I think that Godard sensed the winds of change and jumped on the political bandwagon as a means to find the drive for his cinema to grow. And the cool, cruel detachment he bestows on the politics on display is enough to prove that his irony has seldom been more incisive than when he's being revolutionary.

Yeah, it's super bizarre and it's probably Godard's strangest work (which is saying a lot) that I've seen, but I still couldn't look past the glaring flaws and just love the wonderfully surrealist images. The first hour or so of the film is pretty much perfect, combining a brutally random sense of violence with some delightfully weird fantasy images and a dark, dark sense of humour. The infamous ten minute long tracking shot of the traffic jam manages to remain entertaining throughout by linking a series of hilariously comic moments. I also especially liked the bit with the guy with the Porsche singing into a pay phone and the inexplicable appearance of Emily Brontë, who is dismissed as a fictional character and lit on fire. However, once Godard's political beliefs begin making their presence felt in an all too explicit and blatant manner, the film grinds to a halt. I was simply bored during the long monologues on America's foreign policy, which seemed a rather childish attempt by Godard to get his message across. The film never really recovers from this, as even the appearance of a group of cannibalistic revolutionaries can't bring back the same sense of black comedy that populated the first 2/3 of the film. Still, it's utterly brilliant for a majority of the time, and its bizarre images mask a mostly subtle and intelligent tirade against society and commercialism. Not for the faint-hearted, though.