Weekend

Weekend is Jean-Luc Godard's most powerful statement, an anarchic representation of the West run amok, with parallels to both Alice in Wonderland and the Marquis de Sade. It is a kind of summation of his career up to that point (1967), and very much of its time. It's the cinematic equivalent of "Burn the motherfucker down."

It stars Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne as two horrible bourgeoisie. They need to get to her father's house before he dies so they can assure themselves of his inheritance. But they get stuck in a huge traffic jam, and then find themselves on foot, running into a variety of different characters. Eventually they are kidnapped by a revolutionary group that are also cannibals.

It's interesting to note that the word "weekend" is of American provenance, and there is no French equivalent, so just by the title Godard is condemning American culture and politics. There are also many destroyed cars, and people hitting each with other cars, and fighting over cars. If we think of America as being a culture of automobiles, again we can see the effects of the "American century."

Weekend is also drolly funny. There are a lot of great lines. A car explodes, and Darc exclaims, "My Hermes handbag!" Trying to catch a lift, an old woman stops and asks Yanne if he'd rather be screwed by Mao or Johnson. "Johnson, of course," he says. She sneers and says, "Fascist," and drives off.

The most famous scene is an extremely long tracking shot, more than five minutes, of the traffic jam. There are many cars, and also wagons, people playing cards on their hoods, and animals (a cage full of lions, a llama, some monkeys). This is not the only long take--another has the couple fighting Jean-Pierre Leaud for a car, and another has them interacting with Emily Bronte, whom they set on fire. Everywhere they go they find wreckage and dead bodies lying around. It's like a post-apocalyptic landscape.

Weekend was very much of its time, but it also works today, unlike many films about the counterculture of the '60s. Consumerism is only worse today--even Godard could not have envisioned things like Black Friday.