Week-End

Can the bourgeoisie distinguish between erasing the difference between the nightmare of their "post-industrial" desires and the reality - a reality in which the difference between the tearing apart of a human body and the tragic death of a Hermès bag is blurred? Can the leftist filmmaker distinguish his film from a similar perverse imagination that he displays in the introduction of the bourgeois characters he created? The bourgeoisie fantasizes about debauched sex with eggs and milk, while the anarchic guerilla boils people in the end, mixing them with eggs or pork. Therefore, Weekend is not yet a fully political film by Godard - it is still self-ironic and sometimes ambiguous. It is rather a dirty dream of a leftist who bestows it with supreme cinematic art on the characters he himself invented to satisfy his desires. But just like any fantasy, this one also has its origin in the reality it reacts to, i.e., the total degradation of man by consumption and money. To this, the film/leftist dream responds with a total massacre, anarchic self-destruction of the world that rejects and devours itself without an exit (about a year later, Godard will find an exit: Mao's yellow submarine). Otherwise, it is a brilliant combination of absolutely clear motifs and scenes (the entire film is accompanied by Godard's love for slapstick humor) with the most artful alienation from everything clear (back then). (2017.02.03)

This is a very strange film, though not too strange for Godard. What's presented here is strange, and cruel, yet at the same time, you'll have a feeling that what you see, you somehow know. For example, by experiencing something similar yourselves, only Godard amplifies all the notions in a surreal concert of terrifying humanity and inhumanity. (2015.06.15)