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DVD Weekend
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
The extreme reviews here are very misleading; people either say it's the worst film ever made or Godard's best film. Don't believe either camp. If you're not an expert on Godard and/or 1960s avant-garde cinema, I could definitely see a person writing off this movie as "sheer pretentious crap", but that opinion would derive from a mixture of shock and ignorance. On the other hand, those who say this is Godard's finest work must be riding high on acid and Marxism themselves. The truth of the matter is that "Weekend", like every one of Godard's post-Anna Karina films, is more a flawed experiment than anything else: On occasion, interesting and thought-provoking, but more often static and didactic to the point of alienating the viewer rather than converting them. I respect Godard's attempt to create a new cinema built on "ideas" rather than "emotion", but in my opinion, he went too far in this direction. A piece of art devoid of any emotion is a hollow experience and don't we have enough of that in our crude, consumerist society? And as far as experiments go, much of what he was doing in "Weekend", he had already done and with vastly better results in "Pierrot le Fou". That film was a perfect balance between Godard the political-scientist and Godard the post-modern film-maker. Plus, "Pierrot le Fou" benefited by having Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina. They brought heart and humor to Godard's abstract explosion of ideas; a perfect symbiotic relationship between director and actor(s) that he never achieved again. "Weekend" starts off very promising with the sex dialogue and the long tracking shot of the traffic-jam, leading to a car-crash...but then it descends into a grating mess of dated ideology and too much dead space. You really wish Belmondo and Karina would pop in and show the cast they don't have to be mere nails to Godard's hammer.
Are there O stars?
I am SOOOOOOOO mad. I've just wasted almost two hours of my life watching this "movie." And why? Because of the reviewers that gave this piece of sh** 5 and 4 star ratings. What exactly are you people on that you would even remotely like this film? Maybe it's that pretentious, high-brow snobbery that the best pseudo-intellectuals are versed in. I like alot of French films: Betty Blue, Amelie, etc., but this is sheer garbarge couched in "let's see how much I can piss off my audience before they claim I'm a genius." The next time someone wants to make a movie like this, PLEASE, give the money and the camera to 12-year old with a 70 IQ. I guarantee it will be ALOT better.
My favorite Godard film
WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW
I've not seen all of Jean-Luc Godard's films, but of those I have seen this is my favorite. The narrative concerns a conventional, middle class, married couple who conspire to take a weekend trip to kill the wife's parents for money.
The car trip taken by the couple is comprised of a series of disastrous, improbable, and perplexing events. Art terrorists, thieves, rapists, and Marxist revolutionaries assail the couple at all turns. France is being overrun by weirdos! Bloody, flaming car (and plane!) crashes are everywhere. Violent demise is at every turn.
In the movie is a famous traffic jam scene that employed what was, up until the time of this movie's making, the longest dolly ever made. The scene is absurd, comical, and one of the delights of the movie. Likewise, Godard was becoming interested in socialist politics at this time in his career, in light of the Vietnam war and anti-colonial struggles that were happening globally, so a lot of "revolutionary" ideas are expressed by characters in the film. Unfortunately Godard most often has people simply read manifestos to the camera. Godard's political interests are thus conveyed in an awkward, cumbersome way. You do not have to agree with they're saying in order to enjoy the film.
Having said that, the movie is still one hell of a ride -- no pun intended. The bourgeois couple at the heart of the story don't care about the flaming chaos around them. They just want their money. At one point the husband even sits idly by as a stranger rapes his wife.
As a journey narrative of two people, WEEKEND (or is it WEEK END?)is reminiscent of Alejandro Jodorwosky's 1968 FANDO & LIS. (There was something in the water in the late 60s.) Like Fando & Lis, Weekend is mainly a series of segments or vignettes strung together over the course of two protagonists' quest. In Fando & Lis's case the couple's uest is for the fabled City of Tar; in Weekend's case it's for an ample inheritance.
The last 30 minutes are the best in the film, as well as the most graphic. Comparisons to Pasolini's SALO or even John Waters's PINK FLAMINGOS may come to mind. In short, the bourgeois couple are kidnapped by mod-ish looking radical militants who look as if they've all come from an MC5 concert. One disturbing scene shows the actors actually slaughtering a duck and a pig on camera. The ducks headless neck suirts blood as its body twitches and its wings flap. The pig struggles as its throat is slit in front of the camera. Of course, people kill pigs and fowl everyday -- it's how a lot of folks are supplied with their favorite meals. What could possibly be wrong with showing it, Godard almost seems to ask?
But the radicals also, it turns out, like to literally eat the rich, too. One uncomfortable scene portrays a victim stripping naked, being killed, and then being prepared for a meal as a cook cracks two eggs over her lifeless body and then thrusts a fish into her vagina (not shown on camera). Finally, the bourgeois husband is killed and is served up with the pig meat. The wife, who seems to have accepted the militants' way of life at this point, dines on her husband's and the pig's flesh as the movie ends.
Not for everyone, but some sort of remarkable milestone in cinema. Chaotic, dangerous, transgressive, and never boring.
The version of WEEK END I saw was the PAL version, which featured a great transfer, nice lucid colors, and special features that included an interview with Godard cinematographer Raoul Coutard, who is actually quite humorous and likeable as he sheds light on the circumstances surrounding the making of the movie. ("Godard was in a bad mood most of the time he was making the film, hence all the car crashes," "Godard wanted to piss off the producer with this scene," etc., to paraphrase.)
Robert Bresson always claimed his films are about hope and redemption, but so many end in death or suicide that it's a struggle to reconcile the statement with his films. His final film, based on Leo Tolstoy's story The Counterfeit Note, is no different. It's the harrowing tale of an innocent man, Yvon (Christian Patey), whose victimization at the hands of an arrogant upper-class delinquent and a greedy shop owner sends him on a downward spiral into a life of crime. The once-happy husband and father turns bitter, angry, self-pitying, and ultimately coldly brutal in the chilling conclusion. It's Bresson's most expansive film and biggest canvas, weaving the paths of numerous characters across Yvon's journey, but he edits with jackrabbit jumps, running headlong through the story with... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Christian Patey - Sylvie Van den Elsen Director(s): Robert Bresson DVD Release Date: Released the 24 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Godard's career is a difficult one to summarize or even to get a grasp on. After creating the seminal New Wave films of the Sixties we all know and love him for, Godard took a drastic turn in the late Sixties-early Seventies when he began making film within his "Dziga-Vertov" group, which were a group of didactic films that marked Godard's complete break from narrative film. After that dead-end, Godard made many beautiful and interesting documentary-theoretical films throughout the Seventies (the best being Numero Deux, Ici Et Ailleurs & Tout Va Bien). He returned to more narrative cinema in the 80's beginning with the little-seen "SAUVE QUI PEUT (LA VIE)". I find most of his 80's films to be pretty weak, besides some good ones up until 1985 or so. My whole point with this rant is that... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Jean-Luc Godard DVD Release Date: Released the 23 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Un Chien Andalou remains a startling artifact suggesting ways in which film can express the subconscious. The result of Luis Bunuel's collaboration with Salvador Dali, the 17-minute, 1929 film was designed expressly to shock and provoke. Opening with the canonical eyeball-slashing sequence and divided into baffling "chapters", this is a work of art obsessed with religion, lust, decay, violence, and death. Un Chien Andalou isn't simply one of the great works of the surrealist movement, but a segment of cinematic DNA that irrevocably altered the aesthetics of film. In its tangled corridors you find the seeds to the disappearing-mouth bit in The Matrix, the carcasses strewn through Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts and pretty much the entire oeuvre of David... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Simone Mareuil - Pierre Batcheff Director(s): Luis Buñuel DVD Release Date: Released the 28 December 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Didn't the theater of the absurd project dissolve years ago? Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique is a reminder why Old Europe is in decline. The existential gobbledegook will most assuredly put any normal person to sleep. Was this film suppose to be about war? Wow, that is sure surprising. Ayn Rand would have had a field day criticizing this indulgence in anti-rationality. Why was Dante dragged into this mess? What did he ever do to Godard and his fellow radical leftists? This cinema journey does indeed start in hell and travels through Purgatory---but it never arrives in Heaven. We are obviously meant to suffer eternal damnation. The photography and the accompanying music are the only mildly redeeming aspects of this so-called cinema experience. Sarajevo is a gorgeous city. Alas,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sarah Adler (II) - Nade Dieu - Rony Kramer Director(s): Jean-Luc Godard DVD Release Date: Released the 17 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The diffinative surrealist masterpiece OF ALL TIME. Banned for 50 years/Andre Brenton said :"L'AGE D'OR" says it all and all others must follow!!! If you love surrealism you must see this film!!
If you don't get it, see it till you do. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gaston Modot - Lya Lys Director(s): Luis Buñuel DVD Release Date: Released the 23 November 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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