breakfastcowl

Weekend

The first Godard film I've seen. Liked it a helluva' lot more than I expected to. I'll take those long takes and tracking shots, thank you very much. If I didn't know better I'd say the film was trying to say a thing or two about a thing or three, but I'm content merely watching the conflagration down to its last embers.

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Weekend

— This isn't a novel, this is a film. A film is life. The biggest mistake of my life was thinking La Chinoise was Godard's most political film when Weekend exists. Honestly, I didn't expect such a surreal film when I started watching it, but I admit I found the mental journey it forced me to take pretty interesting. There's something about Godard's dramatic soul that really captivates me; he had a lot of hatred inside him and used it to fuel his art. It's a unique kind of talent. At first, the criticism of the bourgeoisie is very explicit. From the very first scene, we're struck by situations and dialogue from the main characters demonstrating how the upper classes within the social pyramid live disconnected from society. Their superfluous problems are treated as if they were the worst thing in the world. In one scene, when someone dies and all Corrine cares about is the state of her Hermès bag, this becomes crystal clear. However, it's not just this. The criticism doesn't just stay at the shallow level of “rich people are bad,” as many films tend to do. The narrative manages to show how capitalism and consumer society not only corrupt the rich, but the entire system. There is no way out in a society where its own morals are corrupted, and that's absurd. If that weren't enough, Godard managed to restructure and destroy the way of making movies once again here. If you analyze it, the story is nothing more than characters going from point A to point B, but he uses the narrative simplicity of this journey to transform it into an examination of what cinema is, what it is not, and how to redo everything. Sound, words, and images take on different roles, in addition to a clear metalanguage making it clear it’s a film. It’s a very specific breaking of the fourth wall. Plays with literature and cinema as opposing formulas. It’s an explosion of colors, visuals, and sounds which can leave someone stunned, but that’s the point. It has possibly become one of my favorite Godard films, even though I admit the final minutes lost me a little. Still, his boldness in declaring the end of the film and of cinema, with everything he did during the narrative, deserves all the attention it can get. He was the epitome of drama, and thank goodness for that!