Finally my local video rental place got in the DVD - a chance to see this again after years; I saw it in the theater when it came out. While some of my memories were accurate (the magical herd of sheep, the famous traffic jam), i was surprised what a different tone it had. I remembered it as a lot funnier and a lot less brutal than it seems now - maybe when you're younger casual violence just seems funny...
What a remarkable piece of work...a trenchant political tract, a cartoon, a film of ideas, a grotesque farce, a slap in the face...shocking one minute, annoyingly boring the next...in the end as exhilarating as anything you can see in cinema.
A girl on a train to Berlin: "i remember seeing Weekend and thinking this isn't a movie, but also realizing i'd never seen anything like it."
I once recommended it to a young guy, in love with movies, saying "without Godard, there would be no Gregg Araki or David Lynch."
Highlights:
Mereille Darc's long monologue about the orgy - riveting, spooky and silly, all at the same time. Another example of Godard's weird, perverse, yet wonderful use of music to both highlight and distract you from the scene.
The fight with the kid with the bow and arrow...very funny.
That traffic jam!!! A ten minute parade of honking horns, burlesque humor, cheap sight gags...suddenly giving way to a climax which is just heart-wrenching.
About the DVD: the interview with Raoul Coutard is wonderfully endearing, the audio commentary is annoyingly silly (get rid of that guy!), but the gem is the interview with Mike Figgis, an uncommonly thoughtful reflection on Weekend and Godard...anyone trying to make sense of this infuriatingly dense director should watch this as an introduction to his work.
Anyone who is willing to entertain the notion that film can function as art, which is to say provide a experience that has nothing to do with "entertainment" and that this experience is desirable should see this. Anyone else can just continue to call it "pretentious".
What a remarkable piece of work...a trenchant political tract, a cartoon, a film of ideas, a grotesque farce, a slap in the face...shocking one minute, annoyingly boring the next...in the end as exhilarating as anything you can see in cinema.
A girl on a train to Berlin: "i remember seeing Weekend and thinking this isn't a movie, but also realizing i'd never seen anything like it."
I once recommended it to a young guy, in love with movies, saying "without Godard, there would be no Gregg Araki or David Lynch."
Highlights:
Mereille Darc's long monologue about the orgy - riveting, spooky and silly, all at the same time. Another example of Godard's weird, perverse, yet wonderful use of music to both highlight and distract you from the scene.
The fight with the kid with the bow and arrow...very funny.
That traffic jam!!! A ten minute parade of honking horns, burlesque humor, cheap sight gags...suddenly giving way to a climax which is just heart-wrenching.
About the DVD: the interview with Raoul Coutard is wonderfully endearing, the audio commentary is annoyingly silly (get rid of that guy!), but the gem is the interview with Mike Figgis, an uncommonly thoughtful reflection on Weekend and Godard...anyone trying to make sense of this infuriatingly dense director should watch this as an introduction to his work.
Anyone who is willing to entertain the notion that film can function as art, which is to say provide a experience that has nothing to do with "entertainment" and that this experience is desirable should see this. Anyone else can just continue to call it "pretentious".