MovieChat Forums > Week End (1968) Discussion > Could someone please explain....?

Could someone please explain....?


the whole film, I'm really confused.

: ) thanks

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not without a quart of bourbon, peyote and a week to do nothing but contemplate man's nothingness...

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Please I would love to understand what this film is trying to say. I understand its an attack on bourgeois culture and some of the scenes touch on a few things; class, civilisation, art and culture but why is it presented in such an odd format?

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The odd format is actually less odd than Godard's usual format of that period. Believe it or not, Weekend marked Godard's return to a (slightly) more narrative-based style than most of the movies he had made in the preceding three years.

With the exception of perhaps his first two movies, Breathless and The Little Soldier, Godard's working method aimed to make audiences contemplate the way a film is put together as they are watching it, rather than allowing us to simply sit back and enjoy it. For example, the careless, sloppy editing in his films (especially in Weekend -- notice the way that the background noise doesn't usually match up between different shots) was deliberate, to highlight the artificiality of what is unfolding before our eyes. This can bore some (including me) and engross others.

Unlike Masculine-Feminine, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her and La Chinoise, Weekend actually does have a plot to speak of, despite Godard's attempts to distance us from it. It's just a little bit less freewheeling than those other movies is all.

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Have you even seen the films you are referring to? Weekend is virtually plotless in comparison to Masculine Feminine or La Chinoise. Weekend might be less experimental concerning technical aspect but its narrative is even more fragmented than in his previous features. After Weekend, he became much more experimental och took a more open and direct political approach to film-making.

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I believe you're wrong. In my opinion.

I'd say that Weekend has a greater plot than Masculine Feminine, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, and La Chinoise. When you think about it, it has one of the historically classic plots -- two people are on a journey to reach a certain place and are continually waylaid and held up by other events. Godard's approach to this plotline is fragmented and unique, but there IS a plot to speak of, whereas in the other three I've mentioned there's no plot whatsoever, just a series of character studies which which don't do too much studying because Godard himself often gets distracted from them, prefering to just pontificate on issues he feels are important.

On top of that plot thing, I'd say Weekend is the most technically experimental of Godard's 60s films too. Think of all the little visual tricks -- the film spool jarring across the screen in the car crash scene, the quick cut that turns some decrepit old cars into a flock of sheep -- it's all new stuff for Godard.

In my view, his earlier films all teased us with glimpses of the ideas which Godard confidently displays in Weekend, his masterpiece.

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I don't know what is going on in most of the film, especially near to end when they are captured by the cannibals and then when there is a shoot out in the village. Can anyone please give their thoughts on these scenes?

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Well, I can't understand almost anything in this film.
The woman describing her threesome sexual encounter, two guys fighting over some car crash, and there are so many car crashed with bodies lying on the roadside as if no one cared, the woman kissing truck workers for a bite, the woman raped in the pit while her husband is more interested in finding a hitchhike option and then the cannibals. Man!!! What type of cinema is this? This is the first Goddard film I have seen and I wonder if he is in the same class as Polanski. I have heard he is highly respected, but this film makes me wonder what for?

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At this point in his career, Godard wasn't making films to entertain his audience. He hardly did that over the first dozen films of his career, but by the time of Weekend, he was testing his audiences rather than pleasing them.

I think Weekend is one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. I explained why in the "Blasphemy" thread, at least to the best of my ability.

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One way to look at it is as a technical clinic of sorts.

Think of all the rules of filmmaking that you can recall. Consider all of the ones that you might not have caught. Week End sets out to break as many of them as it has time for.

Matching audio with action, making sure that interesting things happen in scenes, keeping the timeline straight, keeping the fourth wall intact, making sure that you can see the person that's talking at any given time, avoiding the sight of animal slaughter, not drowning the actors out with music: these rules and more are all broken. Why? There are many reasons, but I think that one of them is simply to experiment with the effects. In my opinion, it's pretty great to see a scene start three times for no clear reason, only to lead the viewer to a guy who is having a conversation by singing into a phone.

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David Sterrit's audio commentary on the DVD is a good place to start...some of the points he mentions are superfluous, but it's basically quite helpful.

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i was really confused the first time i saw it too. then i listened to the dvd commentary which was done by film academic David Sterritt. That really helped. do you have the commentary?

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The film is a reaction to the classic Hollywood narrative. Think of old Hollywood classics, and Week End is the opposite. There's certainly more to it than that, but that's the starting point.

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The entire film is the culmination of bourgeois society. It is a visual essay on the barbaric and fundamentally unhuman nature of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, and the horrific and disgusting products of a society of capital.

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Actually the attack is on "civilisation" of which the bourgeoise are a part.

Why do you refuse to remember me?

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I was confused after seeing this film as well. But I'd say I was (and still am) confused in a good way. That is, I want to watch the film again and do more thinking and reading on it.

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I think the whole starting point (to explain Godard's films) is wrong, to an extent at least. No matter how many explanations you would read, you might still not get it. This is because the explanations themselves must be almost as enigmatic as Godard's own. Reading reviews, essays and commentaries is a good place to start with, but they will do nothing but help guide your observation. My suggestion would be to look at "Week End" as an essay, a philosophical-political essay in which Godard combines his deconstruction of all forms of classical representation with studies of history, society and the political climate of the time (let us not forget that the film was made just before 1968).

I'd like to make a comparison. If you read an essay, let's say, by German philosopher Walter Benjamin, and let's add that this is your first essay to read by him, you will have problems getting it. No explanations will do justice to the experience of coming to understand it yourself, but obviously you still need to read commentaries on the essay, which help you understand it yourself. I'm not here to say that we shouldn't discuss films -- of course we should, we must! -- but in terms of Godard explanation is almost impossible. After all, his films are quite difficult to be analyzed in a straight-forward fashion. They are essays written in an eccentric fashion and must be read many times (like the work of Benjamin) to be understood. If one still doesn't understand them, I'd suggest waiting a few years (no offence intended).

Considering what was said about "Week End" in comparison to "La chinoise" and "2 or 3 Things I Knows About Her", I agree with the opinion that "Week End" is much more a plot-film. Surely Godard never cares much about plot, but when it comes down to the presence of a story, "Week End" does come close to the films he made in 1960-1965. Obviously he still deconstructs the representation of this story.

All in all, I think the first reply is absolutely right: "not without a quart of bourbon, peyote and a week to do nothing but contemplate man's nothingness..." Exactly. When it comes to Godard, this board is not enough.

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Although I love "Weekend," my two favorite Godard movies are from the beginning of his career: "Breathless" and "Band of Outsiders." Aside from looking gorgeous, these movies have more conventional storytelling and are more conventionally brilliant.

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