Hacker Cinema
Weekend
Week End
1967 · Film · 104 min
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer preoccupations.
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5 comments on Hacker News
My favorite Goddard memory is coming into the weekly screening for my film theory class and seeing that we would be watching Weekend. I asked the professor for a synopsis and he said it is about moving towards a non-borgouis cinema. Smirking as I thought, "Ask a cinema prof a straightforward question..."
I mean, what's the plot of the film?
That is the plot.
Proceeded to have my mind blown. While I detest his politics, I remain in awe of his brilliance and total command of the medium.
Godard produced some of the images I will never forget. The fast blueness of the Mediterranean in La Mepris, the absolute car based apocalypse created in Weekend, the lifestyle displayed in Masculin Feminin. The small (and sometimes big) editing connections between image, text and language.
Not that every of his films is wnjoyable, but there is something i his films that stays with you for decades.
The obituary did miss the most important part. Why the hell did he commit career suicide, by becoming a revolutionary Maoist, had to leave to Paris, and only made horrible bad movies after that.
The answer is simply a pretty blonde aristocrat, Anne Wiazemsky, who drove him into radicalism. Cannes recently had a bad movie "Redoubtable" about that. https://freebeacon.com/culture/godard-mon-amour-review/
He was extremely talented, until Le Chinoise and The Weekend.
No promises, but I would recommend trying Weekend (1967). I felt the same way about Breathless for a long time, until I watched it the third time and it just "clicked." It's easy to take that film way too seriously and miss the point.
That said, I don't really know why I've watched so many Godard films, since I almost never actually enjoy them (the reason is probably Anna Karina et al. hnngh). Still, he was undoubtedly a genius and I have the uttermost respect for his craft. RIP.
'weekend' is still one of my favourites movies all time.