Ivan Drago
11-09-2007, 09:43 PM
I gave a presentation and wrote a review about this film after seeing it in my CP 101 class, and here I want to post the review.
Before I go into my thoughts on this movie, I want to start off by saying that Jean-Luc Godard is on the level with Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson as one of my favorite filmmakers. His films, at times, have powerful imagery, they grab the viewer's attention, and I love how he chooses to defy cinematic tradition as his way of having fun with something he loves.
He appears to have the most fun in Weekend. Weekend follows an upper-class married couple, Roland (played by Jean Yanne) and Corinne (played by Mireille Darc), as they travel to Corrine's parents house to murder her father in order to secure their inheritance. Along the way, they run into a traffic jam that goes on forever, a group of cannibals, and even Hansel and Gretel look-a-likes.
With this film, Godard sucker-punches the audience with what cinema can be and do, and many scenes provide examples of what cinema can be and do, but I'll narrow it down to a few. In an early scene of the movie, a fistfight breaks outside Roland and Corrine's building, Godard shows that cinema can be entertaining, action-packed and brainless. In a moment later on in the film, one of the cannibalistic hippies drops a giant fish onto a woman's bare vagina. This shows that cinema can be as outrageous as the filmmaker wants it to be. With the scene where Roland and Corrine sit on a garbage heap, listening to a narrator talk about the liberation of Africa, Godard shows that cinema can be informative.
But the best scene in the entire movie is the first scene, right after the opening titles. A woman (I don't remember if it was Corrine or not) tells a news reporter/police officer/somebody about her sexual escapades involving a couple named Paul and Monique, with the camera staying still on the back of her head for the entire monologue. She describes every orgasm and action done to her, Paul and Monique, down to the last detail. It gets disgusting up to the point where the viewer wants to throw up. As bad as that may sound, it's actually a great thing because it's an effective use of imagery. It is so powerful, and very similar to the first scene in one of Godard's earlier movies, Contempt (1963).
Not only does Godard use imagery effectively in this film, but also he makes his characters unconventional to defy cinematic tradition. In a regular movie, the characters are considered real-life. However, in Godard's movie, it is obvious that his characters are in a film and not life. Examples of these are in the now-infamous ten-minute tracking shot of a traffic jam. Normally, in a traffic jam sequence, the characters get trapped in a traffic jam, doomed for the day. But in Weekend, Roland and Corrine go around the traffic jam and honk their car horn at who they pass by. Even the characters know they are in a film. After they encounter Emily and Tom, the Hansel and Gretel look-a-likes, Corrine and Roland both agree that they are imaginary characters.
One more way Godard has fun with filmmaking is with his camera. There are many moments in the film where shots don't center or follow the main characters. One of these moments is near the middle of the film where, after they get into a car accident, Roland and Corrine are sitting on the side of the road waiting for a car to pass by and give them a ride. But during this scene, the camera pans away from them for a minute or two. Afterwards, when they finally get on the yellow dump truck, the camera doesn't center on or follow the truck at all.
Of course, not every film is perfect, and this film is no different, even though it has only one flaw: the music. Apart from the song the band performed towards the end, it was nothing but blaring noise. However, while noisy, it highlights the artifice of the film multiple times in the movie. Most notably, during the "action musicale" scene, where the piano music is happy when there's nothing really happening. Another striking example is the first scene in the film, which I described earlier. It is suspenseful music, but there's nothing really suspenseful about the scene because the viewer doesn't know anything about the characters or how the sexual escapade has to do with the rest of the story.
Near the middle of the movie, Roland and Corrine run into a guy claiming to be God. He tells of the beginning of flamboyance of cinema. I believe that guy was Godard himself, because right after this film, Godard abandoned the New Wave style of filmmaking and went on to make films that ranged from political to straightforward. Why would Godard do this? Maybe he had enough fun with Weekend. Godard put so much energy into making this film, and it shows in every frame.
Before I go into my thoughts on this movie, I want to start off by saying that Jean-Luc Godard is on the level with Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson as one of my favorite filmmakers. His films, at times, have powerful imagery, they grab the viewer's attention, and I love how he chooses to defy cinematic tradition as his way of having fun with something he loves.
He appears to have the most fun in Weekend. Weekend follows an upper-class married couple, Roland (played by Jean Yanne) and Corinne (played by Mireille Darc), as they travel to Corrine's parents house to murder her father in order to secure their inheritance. Along the way, they run into a traffic jam that goes on forever, a group of cannibals, and even Hansel and Gretel look-a-likes.
With this film, Godard sucker-punches the audience with what cinema can be and do, and many scenes provide examples of what cinema can be and do, but I'll narrow it down to a few. In an early scene of the movie, a fistfight breaks outside Roland and Corrine's building, Godard shows that cinema can be entertaining, action-packed and brainless. In a moment later on in the film, one of the cannibalistic hippies drops a giant fish onto a woman's bare vagina. This shows that cinema can be as outrageous as the filmmaker wants it to be. With the scene where Roland and Corrine sit on a garbage heap, listening to a narrator talk about the liberation of Africa, Godard shows that cinema can be informative.
But the best scene in the entire movie is the first scene, right after the opening titles. A woman (I don't remember if it was Corrine or not) tells a news reporter/police officer/somebody about her sexual escapades involving a couple named Paul and Monique, with the camera staying still on the back of her head for the entire monologue. She describes every orgasm and action done to her, Paul and Monique, down to the last detail. It gets disgusting up to the point where the viewer wants to throw up. As bad as that may sound, it's actually a great thing because it's an effective use of imagery. It is so powerful, and very similar to the first scene in one of Godard's earlier movies, Contempt (1963).
Not only does Godard use imagery effectively in this film, but also he makes his characters unconventional to defy cinematic tradition. In a regular movie, the characters are considered real-life. However, in Godard's movie, it is obvious that his characters are in a film and not life. Examples of these are in the now-infamous ten-minute tracking shot of a traffic jam. Normally, in a traffic jam sequence, the characters get trapped in a traffic jam, doomed for the day. But in Weekend, Roland and Corrine go around the traffic jam and honk their car horn at who they pass by. Even the characters know they are in a film. After they encounter Emily and Tom, the Hansel and Gretel look-a-likes, Corrine and Roland both agree that they are imaginary characters.
One more way Godard has fun with filmmaking is with his camera. There are many moments in the film where shots don't center or follow the main characters. One of these moments is near the middle of the film where, after they get into a car accident, Roland and Corrine are sitting on the side of the road waiting for a car to pass by and give them a ride. But during this scene, the camera pans away from them for a minute or two. Afterwards, when they finally get on the yellow dump truck, the camera doesn't center on or follow the truck at all.
Of course, not every film is perfect, and this film is no different, even though it has only one flaw: the music. Apart from the song the band performed towards the end, it was nothing but blaring noise. However, while noisy, it highlights the artifice of the film multiple times in the movie. Most notably, during the "action musicale" scene, where the piano music is happy when there's nothing really happening. Another striking example is the first scene in the film, which I described earlier. It is suspenseful music, but there's nothing really suspenseful about the scene because the viewer doesn't know anything about the characters or how the sexual escapade has to do with the rest of the story.
Near the middle of the movie, Roland and Corrine run into a guy claiming to be God. He tells of the beginning of flamboyance of cinema. I believe that guy was Godard himself, because right after this film, Godard abandoned the New Wave style of filmmaking and went on to make films that ranged from political to straightforward. Why would Godard do this? Maybe he had enough fun with Weekend. Godard put so much energy into making this film, and it shows in every frame.