Weekend
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DVD Cover Information Actor: Jean Yanne, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Mireille Darc, Yves Afonso, Yves Beneyton Director: Jean-Luc Godard Cinematographer: Raoul Coutard Writer: Jean-Luc Godard Editor: Agnčs Guillemot Writer: Julio Cortázar DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC Picture Format: 1.66:1 Running Time: 105 minutes DVD Release Date: 2005-08-23 Audience Rating: Unrated Studio: New Yorker Video |
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Movie Reviews of Weekend
Movie Review: Passe...
Summary: 2 Stars
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.