So I watched pretty much one of the best films I've ever seen tonight. I'm sure it's cracked my top 20. Rarely do cinematic first impressions have this effect on me. This is a must-see masterpiece. The film: Jean-Luc Godard's "Weekend."
Take the weirdest film you've ever seen, multiply it by all the peyote in New Mexico, add equal parts anarchism and contempt for culture, and dash with sex, politics, and cannibalism.
Basically, "Weekend" is a journey into film nihilism, where the obscene and absurd are homogenous with the background and lighting. A husband and wife go to the countryside to visit her mother to ask for money. The two plan on killing the other once the money is obtained. To get to the mother, however, they take a road trip through France. Which to Godard is a land to be strewn with burnt-out automobile wreckage, bloodied bodies, and savage hippies who capture and eat any man, woman, and animal they find.
As the husband and wife venture deeper and deeper into France's countryside, they themselves committ a series of heinous deeds which are equally shocking and hilarious. In short order, they manage to crash multiple stolen vehicles, assault whomever they feel like, get raped, encounter African Marxists and Arab revolutionaries, ask people "are you in this movie or in reality?", and burn Emily Bronte (yes, the author) alive. I say "hilarious" in that all this is done in such an irreverent and cold fashion it has a dream-like cartoon feeling to it all. Black comedy at its finest (or bleakest, if you will).
Finally, the couple themselves get captured by the cannibal hippies who read beautiful poetry and espouse pop culture whilst dining on fellow Frenchmen's flesh. They end up killing the husband and the wife joins their ranks willingly, like a tribal Patty Hearst. The final shot of the film is the wife eating her husband and mentioning that she'll save the rest of his meat for later. The End.
You feel so giddy and violated when the credits roll. Godard has made some gorgeous, thoughtful, and patient films in the past, but here he was letting out all his demons. It's his "fuck you" to the art world. And for that, I say "thank you." Welcome, "Weekend," to Phil's Top 20.
Posted by Phil at February 21, 2004 07:22 AM | TrackBacksounds like something i would like.
Posted by: becky at February 22, 2004 03:59 PMits something anyone with a good (irrevocably dark) sense of humor would love. if you like seeing artists biting the hand that feeds them (the public/critics), this is the film for you.
Posted by: phil at February 23, 2004 12:30 AM