Respond to these rapid questions in our Long Weekend quiz and we will tell you which Long Weekend character you are. Play it now.
Jean-Luc Godard has been chipping away at the language of cinema year after year since the 1960s. Now, in “Weekend,” he has almost stripped everything down to its bare essentials. This is his best and most inventive film to date, according to critics. It’s almost like a movie in its own right. It is certain to be vehemently despised by a large number of people, Godard devotees among them. However, revolutionary films always require a period of time for audiences to catch up with them.
This week’s episode of “Weekend” is about violence and hatred, along with the demise of ideology and the impending cataclysm that will destroy civilization. It is also concerned with the problem of how to make a film about this subject. Movies about the bomb are almost never successful because the subject matter is so vast. Thus, Godard abandons any attempt to depict “real” war or destruction for the sake of entertainment. Instead, he demonstrates attitudes, such as the casual indifference to suffering that permeates our modern society.
The film begins with motorists, perhaps because driving a car is the activity that most quickly arouses the animal in all of us. We see people casually machine-gunning each other over dented fenders or spraying each other with insect repellent. Afterwards, we see a married couple departing for a weekend motoring vacation, unaware that their journey will in fact be a tour through the horrors of consumer civilization.
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The first few scenes have been absolutely hilarious. But it takes a while before we realize how extraordinary this is. When Godard and his wife get on the highway, he says, “I’m going to die.” There’s a traffic jam on the way here. A very long traffic jam exists, and the protagonists must pull out into the other lane in order to pass through it. This marks the beginning of what is arguably Godard’s most famous single shot in his career.
Long Weekend Quiz
It’s a traveling shot, with the camera running parallel to the line of cars, and it goes on for perhaps three quarters of a mile without stopping. It takes a while before we realize that the subject of the shot is not the traffic jam, but rather the fact that the shot is so long in length. The filmmaker Godard once said, “Politics is a traveling shot,” and now we understand what he meant. The technique itself communicates the message.
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Traffic congestion demonstrates how civilization has become enmeshed in its own artifacts and become immobile. After finally abandoning their car, the motorists embarked on the most bizarre odyssey since Gulliver’s Travels across the country. They come face to face with historical figures, walk through scenes from other films, are raped on the street, and witness bodies being set on fire. This is a radical, bitter view of society, and Godard is at pains to dismiss any hope for liberal solutions in favor of the radical and bitter.
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It was once believed, during the time of John Dewey, that universal education would be the panacea for all of humanity’s ills. As a result, Godard creates a scene in which culture is made accessible to the general public: A grand piano is set up in a barnyard, and the pianist takes to the stage to begin performing. Godard uses a startling shot in which he positions his camera in the middle of the barnyard and rotates it through two complete 360-degree turns. It takes us twice as long to see the entirety of the barnyard (pianist, listeners, passersby, and the camera crew). Why? What’s the harm in trying?
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There are a few other strange occurrences. Two lengthy political speeches are delivered, and we are baffled as to why (a) they are so stupid if they are meant to be taken seriously, and (b) why they are so serious if they are meant to be taken seriously. This is the case, I would say, with approximately 95 percent of the rhetoric inspired by radicalism that is currently in fashion today.
We also get an allegorical conclusion from Godard, in which various animals and members of the cast are killed and eaten, among other things, as a metaphor for life. But by this point, we’ve become completely disoriented in this new Godard universe. Everything makes sense, but nothing is able to hold its own. Is it more likely that people are talking to each other than that they are talking to us? What exactly is going on? It’s as bad as it gets in life.
For more personality quizzes check this: In The Earth Quiz.
