Weekend (1967) User Reviews

JLG is JLG, no matter what

[renelsonantonius · 7/10 · 27 January 2008]

Jean-Luc Godard will always be Jean-Luc Godard. Either you love his films or hate them. Either you love the guy or hate him. Now, with "Weekend" (1967, France), I just don't know what to make of him (not that this is not what I generally feel whenever I see one of his films).

At the film's opening credits, it's outrightly declared that it's "a film adrift in cosmos". Godard must've meant that seriously, for once you've entered the film's universe, you're in for one wreck of a viewing experience. This is one chaotic universe--and I meant to say it in a pleasurable way!

To attempt to state the plot of the film could only be a disservice to it--though this is not to say that the film doesn't have a "plot"! To attempt to extract the essence of the film might only be a disgrace to it--though this is not to say that the film doesn't have an "essence"! To attempt to map out Godard's agenda in making the film could just turn out to be a mockery of the filmmaker--though this is not to say that the film doesn't have an "agenda"!

The plot? A couple goes on a weekend trip to their parents' house to execute a sinister plan....The essence? The decadence of bourgeois values, the arbitrary yet natural progression of fate, and the transformative power of social awakening....The agenda? For Godard to become increasingly political and to continue on deconstructing the traditional film narrative methods, and thus "alienating" the film audience.... (Much like, theater-wise, Bertolt Brecht had increasingly become political in his succeeding plays while at the same time had continued on employing "alienating" theatrical devices.)

But all of these takes a side-step to give way to the overwhelming chaos, arbitrariness and "playful" senselessness that truly characterize "Weekend". Or, perhaps, the "means" are designed to be of service to the "end".

This chaotic cosmos is potently embedded in the viewers' sensibilities by way of that jaw-droppingly sustained 10-minute dolly shot of a horrendous countryside traffic jam (the "mother of all traffic jams", as one film reviewer ably put it) that the above-quoted couple encountered on their way to Oinville (their parents' place). After that, the quirky and amoral couple would continue to meet along the way a whole lot of "hindrances" to their destination, most of which Godard leisurely takes his time to stage (as what he did, say, in "Alphaville" and "Band of Outsiders").

On the one hand, these "hindrances" appear to be a carry-over from the previous traffic jam that the couple went through (those car wrecks and corpses). On the other hand, they are intended to be an overt display of the filmmaker's alienating techniques (like at one point where the couple gets to encounter a pair of "fictional", "literary" characters and the man starts to blurt out how "trashy" the film is for all they meet are "crazy characters"--how hilarious!). On the other still, they serve as a venue for Godard's explicit political views, the expressiveness is of such a way that this may take the form of direct camera address (like in that long scene where these two "brothers" pour out their thoughts and sentiments about the oppression in South Africa and the discrimination of the blacks).

Now that I have mentioned things political, I'm not sure if it's even necessary to mention the political "awakening" that came upon the woman after the couple was kidnapped by a band of Communist guerrillas. The scenes comprising this specific episode tread the line of being absurd, grotesque and outrageous that seeing them can't even make one believe them.

The online Premiere magazine listed "Weekend" as one of the "25 Most Dangerous Movies". "Dangerous" in the sense of these films challenge our "bedrock notions" of what it is that we normally see in the movies and how we see them (with films like "A Clockwork Orange", "Eraserhead", "Requiem for a Dream", "Freaks"). It's a question of theme and method. Well, it's not that JLG's films have not always turned our viewing experience upside down. But when compared to, let's say, the ebullient fatalism of "Breathless", "Weekend" in fact exudes an apocalyptic melange and an irresolvable recklessness that make it rather an uncomfy fare.

The irony is that even if this Godard film is labeled as "dangerous", it's still worth a repeat viewing, much like all the other films that made it to the Premiere mag's list. It's one thing to say that this film poses danger and it's another to say that this film is "painful to watch twice". It's something that's worthy of another article--and actually there's an available list for that already!

Godard Takes The Scenic Route Through Hell

[loganx-2 · 7/10 · 20 June 2008]

What if on the day, you went out for a family picnic the world fell apart.

This is as absurd, anarchistic, and pretentiously french as you can possibly imagine, and then a little more so. From the pornographic opening, to I think ,one of, if not, the single longest take in film history (around 15 minutes stuck in traffic, surrounded by bodies and wreckage), the oddest musical montage ever, and the cannibalistic Moaists, it's no wonder that at several points the characters complain aloud that they "wish we were in a less ridiculous film".

This is made at the height of Godard's 60's anti-everything period, and it shows a smidgen...radical left wing politics, literary and philosophical theory, post-modern jokes, and sheer shock cinema, ebb up constantly to convolute an otherwise simple story of French couple trying to take a weekend drive through the country.

Fans of "The Holy Mountain", Takashi Miike, Monty Python, and Luis Bunuel, will enjoy Godard here at his most unhinged and unleashed. It's every bit as witty and intellectually vigorous as anything Godard has created it's just that now all of those ideas which had simmered under the surface have erupted in mass volcanoes. Agitating, difficult, and annoying, yes, but it works on in spite of it, because each scene is utterly different from the last. Singular and well done, something different, from the master of something different.

Jean-Luc Godard Is One Person I Would NOT Want to Spend a Weekend With

[evanston_dad · 8/10 · 22 December 2011]

Jean-Luc Godard's massive WTF of a movie is certainly something to see, but I'm not going to promise that you'll enjoy it.

But if you are familiar with Godard at all, you probably don't need me to warn you. An angry filmmaker who has always made angry movies about what's most wrong with our culture, Godard is at his most caustic in "Week End." It's like he was so mad that he decided to make a movie it would be impossible to enjoy in the traditional sense as a big "F YOU!" to humanity. Thus he plays thunderous music over scenes of dialogue so that you can't hear what people are saying, uses jump cuts and jerks to interrupt the visual flow of what you're seeing, and includes things like a 10-minute tracking shot of a traffic jam showing humanity and its most bizarre.

My praise of Godard and his ilk is always qualified. I understand his importance in the development of film as an art form, but I also instantly bridle at the condescension of filmmakers who feel that it is their duty to use their films to teach me a lesson, and that films can only be meaningful if they are unpleasant.

Grade: B+

Still the meanest film on the block.

[miloc · 10/10 · 4 March 2002]

I gave this movie a 10 out of 10. I expect many people would feel hard-pressed to give it a 2 on the same scale, and I honestly wouldn't blame those who do. "Week End" is a machine built to provoke, and perhaps irritation as well as admiration can be a measure of such a machine's success.

For myself, I love it. It boils with anger, frustration, and insane energy. In one sense, it approaches film like the Cubists approached painting, breaking down images, ideas, characters and plot into startlingly photographed, almost geometric segments. But where the Cubists were to content to experiment with form Godard's instincts stay furiously political; it's as though an early Picasso had been commandeered and refitted by George Grosz.

Arrogance is not always a drawback, as rock and roll fans know-- and "Week End" is a terribly arrogant film. The director trashes every convention that he can think of. It's all thrown together-- music, dialogue, on-screen text, unvarnished political theory, frightening violence-- onto a bare hook of a plot: a young, apparently soulless couple go on a week-end trip in the middle of what appears to be the end of Western civilization. Without apologies Godard throws this mess on the table and asks the rest of us, "What have you got to match it?"

Sadly, not much. Cinema as an art has regressed rather than advanced since this film was released. (Godard himself stalled after "Week End.") Despite the rise of independently funded, non-Hollywood films in the past decade, no one seems ready to dare the sort of experimentation with what film could be that was begun in the 60s, and this is a sad thing. The films made by Godard at the height of his powers are all the more precious now. "Week End" is a document of a time when film mattered. It is an artifact, but it would only be dated if it had been surpassed. It does not rest in peace.

A surrealist, comic nightmare of roadkill, class struggle, murder and politics

[R. J. · 10 February 2003]

Jean-Luc Godard's cruelly ironic portrayal of the apocalypse of Western civilization through automobile accidents and petty greed effectively marked the breaking point in his career; after this, he retreated into an overtly political militant cinema for most of the late sixties/early seventies, following some of the leads here first introduced. Whatever plot there is is slowly deconstructed and disassembled throughout the film's length, as a weekend drive by cynical bourgeois couple Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne turns into a surrealist, comic nightmare of roadkill, class struggle, murder and politics as they have to face the progressively more chaotic consequences of their blind ambition and desire for power. Strikingly photographed in long one-take tracking shots, the most celebrated of which showing an apparently endless traffic jam, the film seems to defend the revolt of the proletariat until, by the end, the bourgeois wife is down with the revolutionary Liberation Front of the Seine and Oise, in a cruelly ironic plot twist that literally underlines the cannibal side of politics. With hindsight, many say that "Week End", released in 1967, effectively announced the May '68 urban uprisings in Paris and marked the beginning of Godard's politically active phase; personally, I think that Godard sensed the winds of change and jumped on the political bandwagon as a means to find the drive for his cinema to grow. And the cool, cruel detachment he bestows on the politics on display is enough to prove that his irony has seldom been more incisive than when he's being revolutionary.

French Class Struggle in the 1960s

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 7 December 2015]

A supposedly idyllic week-end 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.

Following World War II, the French grew increasingly supportive of communism. Maybe not as a whole, but the intellectuals (such as Sartre) embraced it, and it seems a natural reaction following the Nazi occupation of the 1940s. Rejecting the extreme right does tend to push ideology to the left.

Here we have a surreal satire on the class struggle in France in the 1960s. One of the most radical countries during one of the most radical decades. Many have compared this to Luis Bunuel's "Discreet Charm" and with good reason. They can both be seen as the artistic expression of the disdain for the upper class. I dare say this is the better film, even if probably the lesser-known.

A surrealist fantasy - or nightmare

[charchuk · 9/10 · 2 December 2007]

Yeah, it's super bizarre and it's probably Godard's strangest work (which is saying a lot) that I've seen, but I still couldn't look past the glaring flaws and just love the wonderfully surrealist images. The first hour or so of the film is pretty much perfect, combining a brutally random sense of violence with some delightfully weird fantasy images and a dark, dark sense of humour. The infamous ten minute long tracking shot of the traffic jam manages to remain entertaining throughout by linking a series of hilariously comic moments. I also especially liked the bit with the guy with the Porsche singing into a pay phone and the inexplicable appearance of Emily Brontë, who is dismissed as a fictional character and lit on fire. However, once Godard's political beliefs begin making their presence felt in an all too explicit and blatant manner, the film grinds to a halt. I was simply bored during the long monologues on America's foreign policy, which seemed a rather childish attempt by Godard to get his message across. The film never really recovers from this, as even the appearance of a group of cannibalistic revolutionaries can't bring back the same sense of black comedy that populated the first 2/3 of the film. Still, it's utterly brilliant for a majority of the time, and its bizarre images mask a mostly subtle and intelligent tirade against society and commercialism. Not for the faint-hearted, though.

*Wild* fun

[IkuharaKunihiko · 7/10 · 17 June 2005]

A young, bourgeois couple, Roland and Corinne, get on a road trip to inherit some money, but their journey ends in an apocalypse...

"Week-end" is a wonderful joke to the audience. It's director, Godard, breaks in it every possible movie rule and does everything his way, not caring if someone will like it or not. The only way to enjoy it is to simply accept that it's a hilarious, nonsensical black comedy that criticizes a world that can't be changed anyway. Some scenes are pure anarchic fun. Like when Roland says: "This movie is crap!" or when he puts a girl from fantasy on fire.

-----------

And talk about the guys who are eating sandwiches! Roland ask the black one to give him a bite and he gives him just a crumb and replies: "I gave you exactly the percentage from my sandwich that the USA gives to Congo compared to their GDP." Then Corinne asks the white one to give her a part of his sandwich too, for a kiss. She kisses him and he gives her half of his sandwich but also a slap. She asks why, he replies: "That's the politics of kisses and slaps. Just like the oil companies are kissing and then slapping Algerian workers." Talk about hilarious stuff! Having said that, I have to stress out that "Week-end" can get repetitive, preachy and boring at some time, especially in the last half hour which was really stretching my patience at some point ( the *authentic* scene where the revolutionaries kill the goose and the pig ). Godard is great when it comes to style, but somewhat lousy when it comes to tying up a story that fascinates you without any flashy effects. Maybe that's why I liked "Alphaville" more: it had a better, cohesive structure.

Grade: 7/10

weekend: one of the few truly great political films

[jeff_johnston · 10/10 · 3 July 2001]

Weekend is one of the best movies I've ever seen, but it's also one of the most troubling. Its depth politically is, I believe, unmatched in cinema; Godard is truly a master, but this is, like a Sun Ra record, art for which you might need to be prepared.

By telling you to "be prepared," however, I don't mean to say you should go read up on film history. Sure, you'll miss a trick or two if you don't, but there's enough material to keep you very, very interested even if you're not a film student. Nor, in fact, should you even feel the need to read up on French history; it suffices to say that, to be very simplistic about it, as the U.S. was to Vietnam at the time, so France was to Algeria. Really, if you wanted to be ready for ALL the intellectual references and name-dropping, you ought to have a good classical education. That's hard to get, so I can't possibly suggest that...

What I do mean by "be prepared" is: be prepared for long shots that might not make sense, be prepared to consider your place in the world... be prepared to think about the movie while it's running. Hollywood encourages us to turn off our brains while we're watching a movie; Godard doesn't allow it. His film is intentionally aggravating and annoying at times, but Godard knows precisely what he's doing, and he manipulates the viewer expertly. (The infamous "car-jam scene" is to this day the most annoying and at the same time one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.) Be prepared to consider your place in society, society's place in the world, and the problems of those situations. Godard raises numerous incredibly important questions: what is the final fate of literature and the wealths of past generations handed down after political upheaval is finished with them? what is the point of any rhetoric-- communist or otherwise-- in a world of selfish, stupid bourgeois pigs (and, as anyone who's ever worked in fast food will tell you, this one is)? does art even have a purpose in a marketplace?

I personally disagree with those who claim that Weekend is dated and only interesting historically. The message is only obscured to us because the draft is no longer in full swing and because the entertainment industry has succeeded in lulling us into false security. We still have our Vietnams, though they may be secret; and, facts must be faced, most of us are still complete and total jerks, caring very little for the world around us and very much for our own pleasure. At the heart of Godard's movie is a deep and abiding love and compassion for humanity; the decadence of the world around us, however, forces the surface of the film to be cynical and hateful toward all the disgusting influences which keep us from being what we could be.

Extremely unconventional

[saraccan · 7/10 · 4 June 2020]

It's one of those movies if you go in not knowing what you're getting into, you're not gonna have a great time. It doesn't follow a meaningful storyline or a plot but that of course doesn't mean it doesn't have a purpose. It's gonna leave you confused, disturbed and possibly annoyed.

A couple is trying to travel to the wife's parents house but encounter many weird obstacles along the way.

Painful

[NapoleonX · 2/10 · 22 July 2009]

This is a polarising film. People either love it or despise it, it seems. Me, I despise it. The film comes from the same context as Lindsay Anderson's Oh Lucky Man, but while that is a masterpiece, this is just horrible.

Both films take Kafka's unfinished novel - America, for their inspiration and general ideal. America is a surreal story of a youth's travels through the country. Kafka uses the this character as a pure observer, one who does not change over the course of the journey (although the book is about 300 pages and still seems only a quarter finished, so we'll never know). Allowing Kafka to concentrate and comment on the absurd/surreal situations and surroundings. Oh Lucky Man follows this same template to show Britain through the eyes of Malcolm McDowell and Weekend does the same for France.

Both films are also hugely Brechtian, using various tricks and techniques to point up the fact that this is NOT REAL, this is confabulation etc. But the difference comes where Oh Lucky Man uses the constructed film to convey the absurdity of life and the class system, Weekend uses the constructed film to bludgeon us to death with ideological polemic. Because Godard goes further than Anderson in his Brechtian principles, we end up with two principle characters in which we have no investment, at all. We're forced to spend 90 minutes with them, yet we couldn't care less about them. Deliberately so. But in doing this, Godard leaves us with a film that is entirely about his own message, which, in the first half of the film is provided through relentless and overbearing symbolism, and in the second half through a series of long speeches directed to camera. Combined with unpleasant and unnecessary scenes such as the really horrible pig slaying, far worse than any of the off camera violence of the car crashes.

The end result is like listening to a student political apparatchik droning on and on and on about his views whilst repeatedly kicking you in the head so that you get the message. The problem with Brecht is, if you alienate the audience too much, then you've alienated them from what you are trying to convey. Which always seemed self evident to me.

The parts that really stick in the craw for this movie though, is the contrast between the extremely sexually explicit verbal description of the threesome at the start and the off-screen comical rape in the middle, which, even if it could be viewed as allegorical, completely destroys the film's faith in itself and it's characters, what little of it existed in the first place. It's so French with a capital F, it hurts.

Watch Oh Lucky Man instead. That is a work of genius. Weekend is a work of pretension.

Two stars, and only for the traffic jam scene and the piano scene, which are just hints at genius, although they actually make the end result more frustrating and unsatisfying as without them, this is a bad film by the worst most pretentious director in the world, with them, well it's obvious that this is a damn good technical director making the most intellectually pretentious film in the world. Somehow that's far worse.

A funny, horrifying, senseless (at times), artistic film worth seeing.

[Eli_Cash · 9/10 · 24 May 2004]

Wow, such a polarizing film! It seems everyone either detests this work as something less than terrible or conversely praise it to the heavens. I guess I'm sadly somewhere in between. Having read a bit of theory behind the film before I saw it I won't rehash that here, only state my reaction, for if there's anything this picture cries out for it is a reaction. Well here goes. Parts are horrifying. Far more disturbing than slasher film gore (mostly because the imagery being dispensed with aren't human). Parts are boring (and NOT the ten minute tracking shot which was a gem. Has anyone even been in a traffic jam before? Godard merely replicates it and all the while makes you wonder where that couple's car is heading, and what could have caused such a jam). Parts don't make sense, mostly because I don't think they are supposed to. That is their purpose, to disrupt sense. And, surprisingly something that nobody on here has mentioned, parts are very very funny. Okay, so perhaps not everyone will laugh as often as I did, but please, lighten up kids, Godard is making fun of us, its healthy to laugh at oneself once and a while. And some of his film is just fun too. Okay, now go back to the other reviews of how hopelessly miserable you'll feel after watching this, or how much of a religious awakening this will be if your down with the art-house film-erati. Definitely worth seeing.

The oldest thoroughly transgressive film I've seen - offering far more than Breathless

[Stay_away_from_the_Metropol · 7/10 · 7 February 2021]

After seeing WEEKEND (1967), it is hilarious to me that the only film I've heard attached to Jean-Luc Godard's name my entire life has been BREATHLESS, a film which offered absolutely nothing for me, while this movie is a groundbreaker.

It is by no means a pleasant watch, and possibly the oldest fully transgressive movie I've ever seen. What a nightmare. Hard to get through, but an important piece of art. Truly mean-spirited in nature, which I was previously unaware had been done in the 60's, until now. Almost entirely surrealist, often breaking the 4th wall, and many general rules, consciously - most certainly a precursor for movies such as Funny Games.

The audio feels as if it's made to challenge you. Ripping, grating, high end tearing into you relentlessly. It's only adds to the anxiety that this film clearly aims to induce.

The movie feels truly sadistic from a filmmaker's perspective but it's all done with clear purpose. The movie felt like it went on forever, and it wasn't always thrilling, but my level of respect for it never dwindled as I battled through. When things got most twisted, there were definitely a lot of laughs to be had, but all you can do is laugh when the satire and the subject matter is actually so vile. Laugh the pain away. I'm definitely going to check out more Godard from this period in the future, after seeing this.

A strange, bleak, colourful, odd... Weekend

[asandor · 5/10 · 4 July 2015]

Jen Luc-Goddard's "Weekend" is a strange art film. Goddard uses garish colour and strange camera shots and editing cuts throughout the film to give it an anarchistic feeling. Fitting, as this film is about the collapse of society during a weekend car trip. I think.

The film features a number of characters who are completely off their rockers. There is a roadside robbery by Jesus (or God? or God's grandson?), inexplicable on camera animal killings (real, I think), cannibals, murder and a ton of car's honking.

I do not know what else to say about this film really apart from what it made me feel, which was a bit confused. The film is about anarchy and chaos, and the way it is shot is increasingly disjointed as society continues to crumble. Their is also a ton of political commentary about consumerism, neo-colonialism and class division. When this film ended, I really did not know whether I liked it or not. It had some good dark-humour and was interestingly shot, but made little sense beyond that, and left me thinking of an art school project.

All in all, this was a disjointed art film about anarchy, and I didn't like it or dislike it. It just is. It exists. Why, I cannot say. Recommended for fans of Goddard, and anarchists I guess. 5/10

The decline and fall of western civilisation, parts 5 to 10

[ThreeSadTigers · 13 July 2008]

This was the culmination of almost seven years of work for Godard; arriving at a point in which his command of the film-making process was at its most confident and his talent as both a satirist and a grand provocateur could be channelled into making his ultimate statement - about society, cinema and the future of both - in such a way as to act as the bridge between the work that came before, and the work that would eventually follow. With Week End (1967), the intention was to confront the audience with the ultimate depiction of bourgeois decadence in all its morally-bankrupt banality; extending on the ideas behind his previous film, the complicated 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967) - in which prostitution was used as a metaphor for a vapid consumer society willing to confine itself to ineffective action, whilst simultaneously selling itself out for the comfort of life's little luxuries - and all the while creating a merciless parody of the decline of western civilisation in a way that seems frighteningly close to the world that we live in today.

Throughout the film, Godard maintains a tone that is both serious and sardonic; showing us the morally-bankrupt nature of these characters and the mechanisms of the society in which they exist, while simultaneously creating an almost apocalyptic depiction of the end of society brought down by selfishness, consumerism, cannibalism and more. Alongside these particular themes, Godard layers in rudiments of social satire, contemporary French politics, the air of revolution - as hinted towards in the preceding send-up of La Chinoise (1967) - and a less than subtle reliance on Marxist ideologies to tie the whole thing together. Combine these elements with the director's continually provocative approach to film-making - including his typically unconventional use of music, inter-titles, crash cuts, tracking shots, pop-art inspired iconography and jarringly beautiful primary colours, all tied together by the always polarising appropriation of Brecht - and you have a film that is nothing less than progressive, defiant and utterly unique. All of these devises are used to disorientate the audience in a way that makes the viewing of the film as uncomfortable as possible; as scenes drag on and on while the camera explores the often absurd and abstracted tableau of scenes and scenarios in a way that seems to assault the senses of those of us more familiar with the conventional (i.e. bland) films still being produced by Hollywood to this very day.

With this in mind, many approach Week End as anti-narrative film; somehow implying that the film lacks the required elements of plot or character. However, this simply isn't the case. Although it as a far removed from conventional cinema as you could possibly get, there is still a definite narrative to be followed here; with central characters, themes and the traditional idea of characters moving towards a certain set goal as the film progresses. However, there's no attempt to pander to the notions of genre or convention; with Godard instead using satire, allegory, metaphor, pastiche and deconstruction to create several separate avenues of interpretation that all lead back to the central comment on the nature of society in the year nineteen sixty seven. At the time of its release, Week End was seen as a stark comment on the way society was heading, and without question Godard was spot on in his depiction of a world sold out and cast adrift, consumed by consumption its very self and eventually reaching the point at which all forms of expression break down, and are replaced by barbaric savagery, cynicism and self-delusion.

You could argue that most viewers dislike the film simply because it challenges them to think carefully about their own actions and the way they live their lives; with Godard all the while offering his amusing, provocative and highly satirical condemnation of a vapid society, personified by the parasitic creation of Roland and Corrine, a couple so truly fuelled by consumption and greed that the plot itself practically hinges on the question of whether or not they would resort to killing an elderly relative simply for financial gain. Although heavily stylised and overblown for purposes of surrealist humour, Roland and Corrine offer a mirror image of contemporary society at its very worst; predicting a number of currently relevant notions such as the loss of tradition, honour, family and respect, as well as the ultimate destruction, disregard and dismissal of concepts such as art, culture and history. Look around you and you'll see the social relevance of Week End, not simply as a satirical piece, but as a work of pure, abstract prophesy. Society may not have descended to the level of cannibal revolutionaries in the literal sense; but in the regurgitation of violence, horror, sensationalism, scandal, greed and consumption we feed off the carcass of the twentieth century and continue to ask for more.

These themes are expressed in the form of an episodic road movie, continually stylised and colour coded in reference to the traditions of the French flag - with its noble references to liberty, equality and fraternity turned into purposely banal expressions of on-screen agitprop - with even the most profane elements of the plot captured with all the pastoral, idyllic warmth of a traditional picture postcard. The themes and ideas behind the film run so much deeper than this review could ever suggest, with Godard creating one of the most interesting, exciting and entirely radical films of this period. It is difficult and it does take work; however, the sheer weight of Godard's ideas, the intelligence of his vision and the relevance of his themes make it a more than worthwhile experience. Give it time, and you might realise that much of the film is satire at its most wicked. It's also a great deal of fun, and has a number of fantastic scenes that just get better and better with each consecutive viewing.

They don't make 'em like this anymore

[ndn109 · 10/10 · 31 March 2004]

Watching "Weekend" gave me the same joyous sensation as watching Bunuel's "The Phantom of Liberty." It's so blessedly free from conventionality that it's a rollercoaster of voyeuristic pleasure. Every scene is a text unto itself and maybe it relates to the whole, maybe it doesn't. Godard is making up his own rules as he goes along. This might be the first truly existential film I've seen. It's the kind of movie Nietzsche would've made if he'd been alive to see the advent of film art.

It's a shame, though, that the closest thing we have to Godard nowadays is guys like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson. Not to knock Q or Wes - I have a lot of love for their movies - but you just don't feel the same freedom watching one of their movies as you do watching Godard's, because with theirs you still realize you're following a constricting narrative path, contrived to hoodwink us into thinking the world makes sense.

There is certainly a place for that kind of filmmaking. But there's a place for Godard's kind, too, and it's a shame that niche isn't being satisfied.

11+ (cuz JLG's a rule breaker)

A film you will either love or hate

[SweetLikeTropicana · 7/10 · 29 April 2007]

Jean-Luc Goddard's film Weekend is something that is simple yet intricate. On the face of it we get a film that relies little on plot or coherence, seemingly ambling its way through different settings until the story, if it can be described as such, comes to a strange end. However, while mainstream cinema aims to entertain, the avant-garde aims to challenge and subvert and it is within this ethos that Weekend is born. It is a clever film, one that given time will come to be seen as so. On first viewing it is simple to cast it away as nonsense or as a 'bad film' - someone has likened it to being as bad as Street Fighter. Yet the two are incomparable, as Weekend relies on cinematic constructions and subtle political messages rather than attempting to force feed you the story in a linear manner. To draw this comparison is like comparing a Marvel comic to a Jackson Pollock painting.

Although Weekend is not my favourite film from the French New Wave era, it is a good example of the 'genre'. as it were. A lot can be taken from viewing this film, with many subversive political messages being implied about society and the way we live as individuals. It runs in a similar vein to Bunuel's Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, although that is perhaps a more accessible film. If you have the patience and can obtain meaning from one of the longest shots of a traffic jam you're ever likely to see, Weekend may be for you.

Strange, like a nightmare

[Yuliet10 · 6/10 · 24 July 2022]

I think it was like a critique of the modern world and the new way of civilization, I don´t think this is a film for everyone. Starting with the fact that feels heavy to watch, and there are a lot of strange cuts, it tourns out in a fascinating trip with our two main characters spending a lot of time in a road trip across a lot of things I can´t even describe.

I recommend this for those who are looking for a french movie, and a introspective one.

+Has a good camera direction, es pretty much what we see on these days.

the odd moment of perplexity is of no consequence and even increases the mystery

[christopher-underwood · 10/10 · 29 May 2006]

What a wonderful film! Coming back to this film after almost 40 years I am astonished at how invigorating and inspiring it remains. Moreover the passing of time has been very kind to this movie and revealed it to be far more influential and perceptive than one would ever have imagined. It was several years after this was released that we began to notice a black underbelly to the cultural revolution in the West. Not all free love and flowers we were to have to realise as Polanski's wife and friends were massacred and the summer of love began to go so wrong. Moreover, some of the direct political statements that seemed a little forced at the time now look startlingly pure and, once again, perceptive. Even ignoring the political aspect to the film it is a marvel to watch and so amusing. Not every scene makes total sense but we are swept along with so many exciting notions and provocative ideas to digest that the odd moment of perplexity is of no consequence and even increases the mystery. We are constantly convinced that every frame, every sound and every caption makes complete sense to Goddard and that is enough, even if we have to occasionally struggle to keep up. I haven't mentioned the graphic depictions of sex, death, cannibalism and more but then I think in some ways these elements put off potential viewers and they shouldn't. This has to be one of the great movies.

Weekend

[jboothmillard · 6/10 · 21 August 2014]

From director Jean-Luc Godard (À Bout De Soufflé (Breathless), Alphaville, Pierrot Le Fou), this French film from the book of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die was rated the full five out of five stars by critics, so I hoped it would deserve that when I watched it. Basically French middle class married couple the Durands, Corinne (Mireille Darc) and Roland (Jean Yanne) seem to be on an idyllic weekend trip, but in fact each have a secret lover, and each is planning to murder the other, but until then they are on a road trip heading for Corinne's parents' house in the country to secure her inheritance from her dying father, they are prepared to murder him if necessary. The journey is riddled with nightmare occurrences as they travel through the French countryside, including meeting various bizarre characters, a never ending traffic jam caused by a violent road accident, their own car is destroyed, there is a revolution going on, they kill a few people that get in their way, and generally it feels that consumer preoccupations are causing the French bourgeois society is collapsing around them. Eventually though Corrine and Roland arrive at her parents' house, only to find the father has died and the mother is refusing to share any inheritance, so they kill her and go back on the road, only to be taken by a group of hippie revolutionaries, who fend for themselves stealing, and with cannibalism, in their camp is where the film ends. The two leads are pretty much responsible for carrying the film, there are no other supporting characters that stay on screen for long but certainly make enough of a impression, I admit I found it a little hard to follow in places, but I got the gist of it, the most memorable sequence is the long and uncut tracking traffic jam scene as various vehicles and people are stuck, I can see reasons the critics praise it, so it is certainly a watchable drama. Good!

Like watching an actual car crash

[tim-764-291856 · 2/10 · 20 May 2011]

Despite having a cleverly conceived and infamous 8 minute continuous take of the traffic jam from hell, I simply find this film nasty.

There is no humour to lift the macabre hell and whilst it might have been dreamt up in a hallucinogenic haze, when this was fashionable, this doesn't relate to me.

I get the slant on the misplaced morals in a modern society (a woman escaping from a burning car is only concerned for her designer handbag, not her passengers' well-being). It then just gets weirder and weirder, interspersed by shrill lunacy.

As you can guess, I've never got into J L Godard. I love with passion almost all French, Italian and other world cinema, with Felinni and Bergman, both considered a bit balmy and self-centred, as favourites.

It was only through esteemed Film Guides and other reviews that praised this film to the heights that I ever considered buying it. It's relative rarity and controversy are the only reasons to hang onto it.

Quite simply, one of the most astonishing films ever made.

[alice liddell · 10/10 · 22 November 1999]

If you want just one film, which has EVERYTHING, than this is it.

Comedy: hilarious farce. Silly violent slapstick. Satire. Incongruity. Iconoclasm. Our hero beats up a semiological Emily Bronte. Lunch munching dustbin men offer Maoist analyses.

Violence: Quiet French countryside littered with car-crashes. Cannibalistic terrorists. Muggings.

Politics: Godard wants to destroy not just cinema, but Western culture as a whole. Made in the period of unrest just before les evenements of 68. Conventional plot offered and attacked on all sides. Important narrative action elided; irrelevancies privileged.

Aesthetics: Extraordinary beautiful use of colour, music and intertitles - this is the ultimate in Brechtian cinema. Ten-minute traffic jam one of the great sequences in cinema.

WEEK END is a film of two halves. The first part - hilarious and frightening - destroys everything we know and hold dear. The second offers something new. It is noisy, relentless, repetitive, repulsive. It may not be a success, but it is one of the bravest acts in the history of any artform.

After this Godard left the commercial cinema for 13 years. Even today his films are unparalelled in their daring, enquiry and fury. He is too much - we just ignore him. We deserve what we get.

Mixed feelings about this one

[davidgoesboating · 7/10 · 21 October 2006]

I can't help but love the humour that this film uses. It reminded me a lot of L'Age D'Or, except more extreme. I laughed out loud several times, including the apparently notorious traffic jam and Emily Bronte sequences among others. The story line makes no sense whatsoever, but then again neither does Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and everyone loved that. The humour here was so offbeat and refreshing, I had just about decided that Godard's strength must be comedy (his other films, including Alphaville and Contempt, had done little for me).

Now for the negative, and specifically the scenes where Godard tried to incorporate a strong political message. Although the whole film is a political message to some degree, we can all laugh at the actions of the main characters because they are so ridiculous. It was the serious scenes that were not only boring, but sort of sad because of the outdated political message they were trying to convey. Sadness certainly came to mind during the African man's speech on Marxism, especially considering the state that African countries are in today, partially as a result of their systems of government. This was the film's strongest weakness.

I'll admit something... I lost my way a little after the English tourists were captured. I lost track of the main characters, and was sort of at a loss to what was going on. Thus I think I missed the whole point of the film in the end. And I hope the 'hippy' scenes were trying to be satirical because if not, that's pretty sad.

Overall, a good film, one I'd watch again, but as for Godard - major doubts here.

A huge mess

[Undead_Master · 5/10 · 12 September 2006]

This was almost a good movie. There are a whole series of great scenes at the very beginning and it holds strong for about the first 40 minutes of its running time. Unfortunately, Godard decided to turn the second half of the film into irrelevant political drivel.

Parts of the film are almost impossible to endure (the scene with the guy playing piano as the camera circles... The scene where we listen to political rants while looking at blank faces.) some parts of it are just boring and unintelligible. By the time it reaches its conclusion, I was wanting it to end so badly that I barley noticed how cool the final scene was (it's a very amusing Bunuelian kind of ending).

This is a film that's only useful for studying some of the cinematic techniques he uses. You can learn a lot about technique from watching Godard's cinema because to a certain extent, all of his movies are essays on the art of film-making . You have to watch them with a certain detachment... All of them are highly experimental and because of that some of them are really really bad... This one has just barely enough entertainment value to be enjoyed on a conventional level for the first half, but the second half is nothing but a series of failed experiments and self serving political/philosophical nonsense.

Not one of his better works. If you're new to Godard, skip this one for now and watch something like Aphaville instead.