The author begins by analyzing the title sequence and how colors, images and the rapid pace elicit a particular mood and pace for the film. The analysis given is in regards to its historical significance, being that Andy Warhol and pop-art had begun to really take off and “shared a refusal to draw boundaries between rarified conceptualism and early materialism,” but also absorbed “the products and processes of commodity culture, defamiliarizing them through rhythmic repetition and self-referential irony” (90). Godard achieves this by placing belittled value on the film itself. Hence, “This film was found on a garbage heap” not only shows the director’s attitude for the film itself, but just as pop-art in a way destroyed the essence of art as an object, Weekend is not prided as cinematic art, unlike other Godard masterpieces like Bande à Part (1964), À Bout de Souffle (1960), or even Pierrot Le Fou (1965). However, just because the creator diminishes the value of the film, it does not mean that a sense of meaning is nonexistent. The author compares various scenes in the film to absurdist playwrights such as Eugene Ionesco, but also the most frequently compared, Bertolt Brecht. Theatre of the Absurd in the most existential way contains no meaning, therefore meaning is created. This contradictory statement is an example of Weekend, in the way that meaning is constructed by an absence of meaning.

While describing the title frame, the author says it “evokes the assembly-line aesthetics of pop, which rejects the notion that art must have ‘unique’ or ‘special’ properties.” Just as the author of this essay dissects the film piece by piece, Godard dissects the spectacle of narrative cinema and reassembles it in a way that stirs a completely new fascination with his ideology. By taking the “unique” and “special” properties of cinema, such as the Invisible editing style and direct aim approach to cinematography, he arouses an optical sensation with montage editing in the title credits and visually documents a traffic jam for seven uninterrupted minutes.

Godard’s attitude towards the film affects the audience’s perception, because he clearly interrupts the somewhat narrative flow of the film to literally give his radical opinion. The author of the essay mentions Godard “readily included theatrical cinema in his expanding list of cultural products that were being deprived of their souls by commercialization and commodification” (91). How ironic is it that after forty years, Criterion benefits from his films’ financial gain the most by selling DVD’s at a higher set price due to included features. This really puts Weekend’s “message” into perspective. The film would not be distributed unless there was a high demand. Since there is such a demand, the film acts as a warning for future financial success on the film’s behalf. On the other hand, without the material-form of the film, the possibility of seeing and studying it in class would not exist. Godard might prefer his film to stay out of the hands of film classes with unlimited opportunities for analysis, but this proves how art truly is a living and breathing entity and once shaped, is uncontainable to even its creator.

While discussing Godard’s view of the film within the film, another point to mention is like the author says, that Godard shows “drastic transition of his career – from liberal skeptic to radical mutineer” within the film. This is significant, because it shows not only how each director’s films can showcase mature progression of craft, but also various shifts in personal ideological beliefs. In the beginning of the semester, the first Godard film shown was À Bout de Souffle, and the last was Weekend, which perfectly stirs up a wide range of comparisons, but more importantly, contrasts. Godard started by breaking the conventional styles of Classical Hollywood and wound up interjecting his own conscious thought with the film’s narrative. The author says, “Godard weaves his disturbing vision into the film itself” by punctuating action with “jarring disruptive blocks of typography.”

The author mentions how the world created by the filmmaker is, to use Godard’s own words, “adrift in the cosmos.” The logic of AND is used in constructing this notion, because Godard makes it abundantly clear that the film itself is adrift in the cosmos, and if cinema is life, then life is adrift in the cosmos. This brings up how film, something real and materialistic, can be adrift in the cosmos, something theoretical and metaphorical. By entering the world of the film, the audience becomes engulfed in the logic of being adrift in the cosmos by forcing the audience to follow the characters through this anarchic world and witness the cruelty of a morally and economically declined society, where the only option for the characters is to float around from place to place and fall into pity.

One scene in particular has Corinne undressed to her bra and panties, evenly framed, but silhouetted, as she recounts a specific, descriptive sexual memory, and delivers it aloud in a monotonous tone. Sterritt asks in his essay, “Is this some new kind of sociopolitical critique or just a dose of old-fashioned pornography” (94)? His question perfectly and ironically summarizes the scene, in the sense of rendering questions. By viewing the scene, nothing mentioned serves as reasoning for the rest of the film, however it does provide the audience with insight into Corrinne. The monologue delivered in its grotesque detail of course comes off as shocking, however it is the “image” itself that accompanies the eroticism. By clouding Corinne in the darkness, her body is flattened out by the absence of light, thus creating a different set of filthy images – not the ones that are shown in the film (cinematic), but those which are imagined by the audience as she cites her dirty experience (cognitive). This effect, as Sterritt claims, “undermines the very idea of cinematic spectacle ” (95). Through his alteration, taking the spectacle out, the focus shifts from the cinematic to the cognitive. The Logic of AND plays a great deal in the scene as well. Going back to the author’s question, the scene works on one level as sociopolitical AND the other as pornography. But more importantly, it is the sociopolitical criticism of the scene in which categorizes as pornography. Since Corinne’s body is never fully present in the light, does it really constitute as “sexual?” Even pushing further, does this scene comment more on society and the way in which it perceives images? What is really being perceived? It is clear what is NOT seen, and that itself seems to become the emphasis, pushing, as Sterritt says, more towards a “cinema that doesn’t show” (96)?

The author also claims that Godard takes a Brechtian approach with the elements in the film, turning “image and sound into equal parts, each with its own aesthetic and expressive integrity” (96). This criticism definitely is apparent in the “traffic jam” scene. While stunning in its technical aspect, consisting of a single-uninterrupted seven minute and thirty –five second take, the way in which Godard constructs the objects inside the frame is what creates a feeling of alienation. Sterritt beautifully summarizes the scene, commenting that Godard paralyzes “cars altogether by cramming them into a self-suffocating gridlock so devoid of action and energy that the movie itself almost stops moving” (97). Taking the “scene” out of the scene itself, Godard brews an experience instead. One does not watch the entire scene and forget it, because there obviously exists something deeper than just viewing a traffic jam. Devoid of any sense of entertainment, Godard makes the shot a horrific roller coaster, one in which after viewing the first few minutes, it feels as though the ride could last for eternity. Sterritt continues: “the action seems stretched and flattened into a two-dimensional spectacle, as shallow as the society that has allowed everyday life to degenerate so badly” (97). There is only one way to view the horrendous sights, and that is the way Godard shows the society unfolding within the frame. While on one level, the scene is shown in one long take, the only object remaining constant is Corinne and Roland’s car. Everything else is almost split into different segments, depicting individual people and different situation in each elongated segment. Everything from “recreation (card playing, a chess match), sports (ball tossing, sailboat rigging), culture (book reading, radio listening), personal hygiene (relaxing, urinating)” is perfectly sequenced throughout the entire take. Accompanying the images, a loud piercing series of car horns, blare aloud, something that is “counterpointing the flatness of the image with a direct assault on the audience’s eardrums, stamping the scene’s immediacy on our bodies as we experience it” (97).

( Watch scene here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ScGLdfqdYo&feature=related )

On their way to Oinville, the couple ventures through the countryside, a place that Godard finds “more conductive to true civilization than the city or suburbs” (100). By transitioning from the city to the countryside, the film moves into this environment, one that feels in a way like a detour, furthering the couple away from their intended destination. Sterritt claims that Godard “sees the countryside as an appropriate place to unleash the purgative powers of his growing sociocultural rage. The characters that we meet in this rural “civilization” are like the “uncivilized” protagonists in Band of Outsiders, two years earlier” (100). While some might find the countryside individuals “uncivilized,” it is only due to the predigested notion of civil, and how many perceive difference as the opposite of a norm – taboo. The author continues: “Civilization may exist alongside the roadway, but on the asphalt a Three Stooges mentality remains alive and well” (101). This separation of the road into the contents on the side and the surface itself establishes more than just accepting a clear notion of the road – or in this case: civilization. And just like any road, one leads to another. In the case of Corinne and Roland, the author states that the characters leave a familiar world, “sliding into a new disorienting mode of existence” (101). Roads converge into different paths: bridges, tunnels, hills, and by transitioning from one point to the next, the film moves from civilization to existence, just as a conversation does.

Moving into the next striking intertitle: one that reads:

The Extermin

Ating Angel

While making a reference to Luis Buñuel’s film The Exterminating Angel(1962), “about a dinner party that spirals into chaos when the guests discover they are incapable of leaving” (102). Just as the characters in Buñuel’s film are unable to leave the dinner party, Godard makes it where the characters in Weekend are unable to escape the nightmare of reality, but also he equates the character to the viewer, who cannot escape the perceived nightmare of the film and exist back in reality. However, the film works just like a mirror, reflecting the harshness of reality, therefore the viewer’s interaction with the film is harmless, but it is the viewer’s admittance back into reality that the real harshness exists.

As the Roland and Corinne walk on the road, an oncoming car passes by and the driver pulls alongside the two min characters. He asks, “Would you rather be fucked by Mao or Johnson?” Rowland answers, “Johnson, of course,” and the driver replies, “Dirty fascist!” as he speeds off. In the following segment, another diver stops and poses another question: “Who attacked first: Israel or Egypt?” Corinne answers, “Those bastards, The Egyptians!” and the driver replies, “ignorant fool!” as he drives away. Godard establishes one out of many contradictions presented in the film. In his previous masterpiece,Pierrot Le Fou (1965), he presented intertwining dualities with the Logic of And, straying away from the incessant classification of “either/or.” In these two scenes, Godard does not continue with this theory, but instead presents an “either/or” situation and forces the characters to make a distinction between the two choices. Whether “Mao” or “Johnson” or “Israel” or “Egypt” is chosen, the fact that one single answer is chosen clearly shows that Godard poses the idea of direct response rather than critical logic or analysis. A contemporary illustration of this is found in political question: “Are you for or against abortion?”, “For or against capital punishment?”, “Socialist or Capitalist?” The list goes on and on, and yet with every question, a direct response will typically occur. No one takes the time to think about endless options or connections between the two, but instead to identify the distinctions and further an “either/or” mentality.

Roland and Corinne hitch a ride with an Arab and an African American, who both give long monologues about American’s Imperial conflict with Africa, how nonviolent ideas cannot solve black suppression, and how they must use guerilla tactic in order to survive. The monologues are given while the camera remains statically up close on one person as the other one speaks. Godard denies the audience from capturing the spectacle of watching the speaker and taking in the emotions express. Instead, he splits dialogue and image in two separate functions. The only time he cuts is to show flashbacks to suggest relevancy to past clips that may have been interpreted incoherent. On the other hand in relation to the his editing strategy in the film, it is unlikely Godard would attempt halfway in the film to present a sense of “understanding.” More than likely, the images are shown to allow the viewer to either analyze, and find some connection between the image and the dialogue, or to add more confusion to the film’s ongoing lunacy.

The Arab and African American drive them down one road and Roland yells out, and while making an attempt to jump off, tells Corinne that they have in fact arrived in their destination, Oinville. As they run into the area, “WEEKEND” in bold blue letters flashes across the screen three times. This intertitle could occur for many reasons. Godard could be attempting to break the fourth-wall in the Brechtian sense once again by reacquainting the audience not only of what they are watching (a film), but exactly which film they are in fact watching (Weekend). And to break the film’s progress with its title card practically at the midpoint seems to suggest a return to somewhat of a narrative discourse. From the beginning, the goal of the main characters was to make it to Oinville, and while throughout the film, the goal seemed impossible, they, along with the audience, endured a hellacious trip, but finally arrived to what they think can solve their plans.

As Corinne takes a bath, she tells Roland that after missing her father’s death, and that her mother was not staying true to the 50/50 split of his inheritance, extreme precautions need to happen. The film cuts to the mother bringing home a rabbit. Roland, after talking to the mother and her not coming to any agreeing terms of splitting them money with them, wraps Corinne’s scarf around the mother’s neck and Corinne runs at her with a butcher knife. Godard again, instead of showing the murder occur, cuts to a close-up of the dead rabbit on the floor, and the audiences watches as it is drenched in what appears to be the mother’s blood. They decide the best method for disposing the body and finally place her in a wrecked car, playing off the death as an accident. They put her in a car that had collided with a plane and set the car on fire as they run off into the woods.

After crashing a picnic, Roland and Corinne attempt to steal their food and drink, however a band of extremists dressed as hippies, also bombared the picnic and take Roland, Corinne, and a few others with them, and kill the others. As Sterritt claims, this is an “interesting mixture of ‘love generation’ and ‘guerrilla underground’ iconography, evoking the 1960’s era in contradictory ways (120).” While Godard’s contradictions were established in his earlier films, Weekend presents something more – something deeper. The moment this Seine and Oise Liberation Front takes control of the main characters, they also take control of the film and it’s audience. Consider the narrative taken hostage and there lies the possibility of assassination. But really, the deeper Roland and Corinne are brought into the woods, the more they discover the SOLF is well “civilized.” Godard brings into play the notion of civilization, structure, and order, and how they are defined. The point is, Capitalism has its idea of civilization and France has theirs, and Russia, and Holland, and ect. However more than anything else, is how closely the SOFL carry out ideas of Capitalism. Sterrit suggests that the SOLF led by its leader, Kalfon, wants to “liberate us from the notion of ‘decency’ and ‘discipline’ that bourgeois society uses to keep our anarchic bodies under suffocating control” (122). The group strives to establish rule by disassembling order. Stertitt also suggest there are two purposes for the SOLF:

1) “It unmasks the abhorrent urges that dwell in all human hearts, prompting repressions and denials that evolve into psychosexual norms of civilized society.”

2) “It argues that a ‘return of the repressed’ might readily occur if the social order were attacked with enough vigor by forces believing that, in Kalfon’s words, the ‘horror of the bourgeois’ can be dislodged only by ‘even more horror.’” (122)

The theme of contradiction does in fact resurface after this comment. For it presents two ideas: civilization needs structure in order to survive, and civilization needs disassembling in order to thrive. Sterritt poses that Godard has two stances over cinema with this film, and “divided between excitement over cinema’s ability to unveil society’s foul secrets, and genuine disgust at the putrescene that crawls into view when civilization’s rock is overturned” (123). The film could primarily use single cinematic aesthetics to comprise the time, but Godard uses editing along with cinematography to allow his vision to illustrate. The rapid editing and intertitles work along with Raoul Cotard’s smooth, lingering camera movements. Ideals are all clashing in Weekend, whether it is the content of the film or the film itself.

As much a cinephille as Godard is, he was able to throw in references to key titles. When one member calls another via radio, he uses film titles as code names. He says, “Battleship Potempkin callingThe Searchers.” The clashing of opposing genres creates yet another idea feeing to the notion of disjunction. Potempkin is Sergei Eisenstein’s Soviet silent masterpiece, and The Searchers is John Ford’s American western epic. Communicating from one to the other suggest a metaphysical styles and techniques passed down through the decades. While Ford’s visual grandeur does not resemble Eisenstein’s soviet montage, both films are major contributions to cinema and the development of aesthetics: Eisenstein through editing/montage and Ford through cinematography/CinemaScope.

When Roland attempts to make a run from the group, Kalfon, the leader, kills him with a slingshot. Corinne, growing close to the group, witnesses the death with a lack of emotions. As she grows closer to the group, Kalfon brings her back to the island base and plays the drums with a beat as he recites a speech about the beauty of the ocean and the idea of humanity in this world. When Kalfon attempts to trade Corinne for his lover, the trade goes horribly wrong and his lover is shot and killed. Kalfon and Corinne rejoin and run back to the base. The next scene follows with Kafon and Corinne sitting on a bank, discussing animals and nature. The cook brings them over a hot plate with contents inside. They both take out pieces and began eating. Corinne says, “Not bad,” and Kalfon responds, “A mixture of pig and the leftovers of the English tourists. There must be a bit of your husband, too.” She takes a few more bites and then says, “I’ll have a bit more later.”

Sterritt closes his essay by stating, “this is surely a ‘civilization’ turned upside down and inside-out, wherein life and death, beauty and horror, reality and illusion become heedlessly confounded with their opposites. The purpose of these inversions and contaminations is to shake us into a brutal new awareness of how tragically our real-world civilizations has gone astray” (128). In other words, by the end of the film, Weekend is more than just an artistic expression of chaos in society, but more of a reflection of our own. The chaotic society is ours, and it has dwindles down further to a newer level of lethargy. And with Godard’s comparison to Capitalism, the film ends with the struggle of survival competition, where by the end, one devours another just to survive. Therefore, Weekend presents the idea that Capitalism ends in cannibalism.

Godard ends with a title card that transitions into the infamous statement next to its opening one:

END

END OF CINEMA

This statement is one of the most widely researched parts of the film. By concluding the film with such a bold statement, Godard possibly suggests many ideas. One idea is that it is his farewell comment to narrative cinema. From that moment on, Godard’s films were purely non-narrative, and his work with the Dziga Vertov Group were primarily socio-political experimental projects, rather than films. Another idea is that cinema ends with Capitalism. Having such a large industry, American cinema thrives off of profit, and Godard possibly suggests its ultimate demise when its important rests with the film’s revenue. Four years earlier in his film Contempt (1963), there is a scene where Jack Palance portrays a producer who wants a large film with no artistic merit, but beautiful women that will bring in big money. In the background of his speech, there is a quote on the wall from cinema pioneer Auguste Lumière that says, “The cinema is an invention without a future.” Perhaps this also explains why Godard takes a complete shift primarily to experimental films. Maybe Weekend is his realization that narrative film has no future for individuals with bright minds like himself. All of this does in fact support Godard’s intertitle that the film was “found on a trash heap.” Maybe Godard’s message is too revealing of the truth not only of civilization, mankind and humanity, but of the film industry, and that itself explains the economical worth of Weekend.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE

It took a year to finish this essay, because Godard’s film had such a strong impact on me that after a while I found writing about the film meaningless and perhaps realized the film’s intention. I thought maybe Weekend is not meant to belong on the academic bookshelf. However then I realized the film was no longer being distributed since New Yorker Video collapsed, and so then I found myself wanting to obtain a copy before they became obsolete, and then I saw that two DVD’s of weekend were being sold on EBAY for $75.00 and $200.00. I couldn’t believe the film’s worth had grown to such a high price. And then I watched the film again and thought about the film having not just a high value, but a value at all. Not to belittle the film by suggesting it has no value at all, however the film has a lot to say about value, but also its own. It is so fascinating that just as art functions, once a piece of paper with ink drawn on it by some poor peasant, over time the piece fluctuates within a market economy and then the value rises. How long will it take before Criterion obtains the rights to the film and neatly packages it with three-disc bonus extras and puts it back on the shelves at Best Buy? What does that say? With all of these actions, one cannot help but hear the words of Weekend’s conclusion, “End of Cinema.”