Jean Luc Godard's Weekend is breathtaking cinema, the kind that makes you want to run out and drag all your friends back into the theatre. And then perhaps you will run back out and begin to make film yourself.
Plotless, brilliant and difficult the film manages to string its sequences together into a hellish world of capitalist despair. The film seemingly progresses through the end of capitalism and into a nightmare world of anarchy. This is not Godard's endorsement of the revolution that he would soon be such a supporter of, indeed he is still several important months away from May 1968. This is a denoucment of what can happen, seen through the lens of the decadence of the French Revolution.
A scene early in the film, in which Corrine talks of a bizarre orgy in which she was a participant one ups Bergman's similar scene in Persona by adding a level of Dali surrealism and Godard's own gallows humor. It is also one of the most erotic scenes in all his work.
The tracking shot. It is well discussed and is as brilliant as Welles's in Touch of Evil. The best aspect of both is that it is not sheer bravado by the filmmaker. Godard's shot tells us everything he believes about the capitalist society. It is the Rosetta stone for understanding Weekend and all of his political work.
My thoughts are still jumbled and my head whirling. I can't wait to read more and see the film again. All I know is that this is brilliance of the highest order, and deserving of the spot I place it in my personal canon.
My 10 favorite films of all time:
1. Citizen Kane
2. Weekend
3. The Decalogue
4. Rashomon
5. A Woman Under the Influence
6. Playtime
7. Dr. Strangelove
8. The Royal Tennenbaums
9. Au Hasard Balthazar
10. Hannah and Her Sisters
Plotless, brilliant and difficult the film manages to string its sequences together into a hellish world of capitalist despair. The film seemingly progresses through the end of capitalism and into a nightmare world of anarchy. This is not Godard's endorsement of the revolution that he would soon be such a supporter of, indeed he is still several important months away from May 1968. This is a denoucment of what can happen, seen through the lens of the decadence of the French Revolution.
A scene early in the film, in which Corrine talks of a bizarre orgy in which she was a participant one ups Bergman's similar scene in Persona by adding a level of Dali surrealism and Godard's own gallows humor. It is also one of the most erotic scenes in all his work.
The tracking shot. It is well discussed and is as brilliant as Welles's in Touch of Evil. The best aspect of both is that it is not sheer bravado by the filmmaker. Godard's shot tells us everything he believes about the capitalist society. It is the Rosetta stone for understanding Weekend and all of his political work.
My thoughts are still jumbled and my head whirling. I can't wait to read more and see the film again. All I know is that this is brilliance of the highest order, and deserving of the spot I place it in my personal canon.
My 10 favorite films of all time:
1. Citizen Kane
2. Weekend
3. The Decalogue
4. Rashomon
5. A Woman Under the Influence
6. Playtime
7. Dr. Strangelove
8. The Royal Tennenbaums
9. Au Hasard Balthazar
10. Hannah and Her Sisters
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