Weekend (1967)

 Jean-Luc Godard's "Weekend"

With "Weekend," Jean-Luc Godard takes a final bow to France's New Wave movement. After the film, Godard took a break from making fictional feature-length narratives. This move was intended to be permanent, but he could not help himself by the time he reached the 1980s with "Every Man for Himself." "Weekend" demonstrates Godard at his most extreme, and more importantly, at his most political.

To me, "Weekend" seems incredibly reminiscent of a Luis Bunuel film. Bunuel films typically centered on characters attempting to to do something, only to be prevented from doing so time and time again. The lovers in "L'Age d'Or" cannot consummate their affections and continue to get interrupted, the guests at a dinner party in "The Exterminating Angel" cannot physically bring themselves to leave the ballroom, and the wealthy characters of "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise" try and fail continually to have dinner with one another.

In "Weekend," the Parisian couple of the story are on a trip across the French countryside to collect an inheritance. However, along the way, their progress is continually arrested by absurd and extreme circumstances. Like with Bunuel, Godard's reasons for these continued halts in progress provide the narrative functionality of the film. In the case of "Weekend," our wealthy characters are confronted with the over-consumption and savage selfishness of their bourgeois class.

Along their "Alice in Wonderland"-esque journey, it is clear that the entire world is falling apart around the characters. There are countless car wrecks, dead bodies, untamed crime, etc. Godard's characters traverse through this landscape with no sense of concern. Their only concern lies in getting to their inheritance. 

The absurdity of the bourgeois selfish cravenness is mixed with Godard's metatextual calls for class revolution. Various lower-class characters begin to demonstrate class consciousness and either vocalize it to the viewer or descend into lawless violence against the upper classes. The film descends into total anarchy, with our lead characters getting captured by cannibalistic revolutionaries living in the woods.

Although it is not his most eloquent film by any means, Godard certainly communicates his thoughts in their fullest capacity with this film. As stated in text early in the film, it is a film "found in the garbage." It's meant to be debased, vile, and unruly. It depicts humanity in a state of savage chaos, unbound by classist order. Throughout the entirety of the film, Godard makes sure to offend every single possible person in his film. It is a film meant to be rebellious and unruly, unbound by expectation to precedent. 

Through this unboundedness the film demonstrates, Godard seems to be iterating that it is a means by which one can rebel. Film and its construction is consistently discussed in Godard films. It is clear that Godard uses film to get his political points across and demands a sense of dissent from the public. The media of films allows Godard to dissent in his own way. With "Weekend," he aims to offend, to belittle, and to ignite the spirit of others to strip themselves of their modernist, capitalist, consumerist, and ideological conceptions and adherences and descend into the savagery of being human.

I feel as though one could say so much more about such a complex and often contradictory film. However, I will merely touch the surface of such an explosive work. "Weekend" marks the end of Godard's classic period. It almost feels like a farewell for me to leave his New Wave work behind, but the films are still available for me to enjoy time and time again. Plus, the great thing about Godard films is that they feel fresh and new upon each watch.