This was the latest Jean-Luc Godard movie I've watched. During the viewing I thought to myself numerous times, "do you want to be the next Jean-Luc Godard?" I dismissed the thought as myself being stuck in a time warp. Perhaps in the 1960s I would have entertained the idea Now, perhaps, the director to be like would be Lars von Trier? In my case it would be. I really like von Trier's films. Yet, I also really like Godard's films. This created a contradiction in my thinking about why I watch films from Godard who is a French New Wave director, and von Trier who was part of the Dogma 95 movement which characterized the New Wave as a dissipating current, that only lightly washed upon the shore of Global Cinema. I think von Trier and the Dogma movement give to little credit to the French New Wave. It did have an impact for a few years at least. Yet, I'm drawn to new currents in the Cinema, so I think it would be naive of me to give too much credit to the New Wave.
I think watching French New Wave films like Godard and Hiroshima Mon Amour and also being a big fan of von Trier has created a situation where I feel like I have to choose between the two. It's either French film or Danish/German film. Von Trier was heavily influenced by the New German Cinema, so perhaps, that is why he thinks the French New Wave has lost significance. Well, I'm no politician and I'm no ideologue about any film movement or any Nationalist film preference. I view film as an art form. To be studied and analyzed in terms of it's qualities. I like films of quality and I will continue to watch as much quality film as I can no matter where or when its from.
On to the film. This film was chaotic and anarchic. I'm no Godard scholar like Richard Brody from the New Yorker, but this film shows where Godard was in the late 1960s. It has several long politically radical monologues which reflect the current debates in French society over neo-colonialism in Algeria, Africa and the Middle East. These long political tracts along with the shots of the highway, car crashes, dead bodies, and directionless narrative depict a film which clearly goes against the classical Cinema. Ebert.com says this was Godard's best film. Perhaps that is right. It is either Weekend or Breathless. Breathless is the big, path breaking hit, Weekend is a reflection of late 60s France. At the crucial point of the film, the two main characters are looking for a ride. It is one of those typical Godard moments when he stops the films action and pulls the viewer in to ask themselves, where is this movie going? What's the purpose of the film? He does it in Pierrot Le Fou and he does it again in Weekend. It also happens in Breathless when Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg are in the hotel together. Doing nothing, aimless, the film stops, the narrative action slows down and the questions come to audiences mind; where is this film going? What is the point of the film? In Breathless there is a resolution, yet what it means is not clear. Same thing happens in Weekend.
Perhaps it is asking a deep existential question about the meaning of life. What are we supposed to do with life? Is life directionless like the actors on the screen? And what are we going to do about it? Where do we find meaning? Fulfillment?
I was teaching about ideological hegemony through movies in the Cinema class I teach. Watching Weekend caused me to reflect on the lecture I gave. Godard questions the dominant ideology of French Imperialism that circulated in France at the time. Clearly he was radically questioning the continuance of French involvement in Africa and the Middle East. He takes direct opposition to the French government exposing it as Racist and Imperialist. The New York Times critic said it was overt diatribe that audiences should have walked out on, yet, perhaps because I'm a historian, I enjoyed it. One of Godard's best.
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