This Isn't A Novel, This Is A Film. A Film Is Life: Weekend (1967)

My last review of a Godard film was less than positive.  I find the director to be more pretentious and less accessible than he has been in previous decades and appears to have no concern with making any sort of relationship with his viewers.  This problem appears to have really occurred within the past two decades and only seems to worsen with each of his subsequent films.  With that in mind, there was a time when he was a master of non-linear cinema that pushed the envelopes of the profane image in film and what political purposes a piece of cinema could provide.  Weekend, one of Godard's more difficult to obtain films, and perhaps his most curious works.  I would by no means place it above my personal favorite Alphaville, nor would I say it is better than Breathless or Contempt, however, it would most certainly find itself jostling for the fourth or fifth spot on a list of his key works.  At this point in Godard's rather controversial career, he had yet to have fallen completely out of regard to many critics and had one of his more respected followings second only to his heightened fame during the French New Wave.  Politically speaking, at this point in his career the outspoken filmmaker was mastering his Marxist heavy voice, one that was at times critical of the contempt directed at the bourgeois, while also being completely aware of the legitimate suffering faced by many foreigners and working class persons of Paris during the late 60's.  In a fashion that could be called Godardian in its creation, the director manages to take what we assume to be a comedy for a better portion of the film and completely drop it on its head, ultimately becoming a dark horror film about societal disconnect and a literal man eat man mentality that emerged with the obsession with consumerism that popped up in the mid-1900's.  If we were to take this solely on its political ideologies and how the narrative pokes fun at French history in order to advance his point, this would be Godard's masterpiece, however, it lacks a complete character evolution that has become so integral to the filmmaker.  To be fair though, the character count in this film is quite large and he does manage to make each person interact substantially with the world around him and for that Godard should be praised.  Ultimately, Weekend is a film that exudes the temperament and concerns of late sixties commentaries while still managing to possess a timelessness, perhaps the most Godard thing about each of his films.

Weekend, for what contextual narrative it possesses, focuses on a bickering married couple known as the Durands.  There is Corinne (Mireille Darc) a soft-spoken housewife who may or may not partake in bizarre sexual encounters in her free time and Roland (Jean Yanne) an explosively angry man who clearly suffers from impotent rage, something he takes out on various individuals throughout the film.  The Durand's are attempting to make it through the French countryside to make it to Corinne's dying father with the intent of racking up a huge inheritance.  However, the two also have the intention of killing one another in order to reap the money for themselves and each of their respective lovers.  The tension that results from such underlying confrontations influences how they engage with the various characters they meet on their pseudo-pilgrimage.  The people they encounter range from the mundane, such as two politically fueled garbagemen to a Mozart praising pianist who claims to be the worst musician alive, as well as the completely absurd as is the case with a man who claims to be the love child of Alexander Dumas and God or the ditsy version of Emily Bronte and her mentally challenged friend Tom Thumb.  A large portion of the interactions within the film end in rather violent means often in shootouts, wrecks, and even incineration, clearly the result of the couples unfulfilled desire to murder one another.  Not only are these interactions clearly frustrating to both Corinne and Roland, they also prove as time wasting endeavors that ultimately mean that they are unable to meet up with Corrine's father and obtain their inheritance.  This failure leads to the couple running into a group of cannibals that eventually kill Roland and cook his body, along with that of other people and a pig, making the statement on Roland's character blatant.  After a seemingly inexplicable shootout between feuding rebels Corrine is depicted returning to the cannibal camp and engaging in a meal, one that includes the flesh of Roland stating that she will eat more of him in a little bit.

It would be easier to comment on what Godard does not comment on in this film than what he does decide to criticize.  It is clear throughout the narrative that the controversial director intends to poke fun at bourgeois privilege, Marxist revolutionaries, guerilla warfare, capitalist frivolity, neo-classicism and racial pride amongst other things.  Furthermore, as is always the case with Godard he clearly intended to deconstruct the notion of cinematic language, so much so that he breaks from his traditional modernist leanings into the post-modern realm and breaks the fourth wall by allowing for the characters to acknowledge their own presence within the film, going so far as to note that they only meet crazy people within the film.  I could go into detail about each of these notions within Weekend, but I am far more inclined to discuss how influenced Godard was by video and television production within this film specifically.  First off, Godard's choice of Darc and Yanne as lead actors reflects his preoccupation with the still new form of media as both of the actors were well regarded for their roles on television by this time in the sixties, but this is only relative to what serves as a stylistic component to his entire film.  Composed as a series of vignettes, Weekend often fades to black inexplicably and repeatedly, something closely associated with cutting to commercials in television.  The genius here comes when Godard simply cuts to more footage of the film.  To Godard, Weekend, film in general, and society as a whole existed in a vacuum of commercialism and television was simply the newest venue with which to tap into the capitalist venture.  With this notion in mind it is somewhat easier to understand where Godard is going with the various diatribes portrayed in the film, almost nonsensical in composition, these various commentaries reflect the fast-based and often jarring style of commercials during television breaks, each does not necessarily preceed or proceed the other, yet they all exist within the same vein of trying to influence the subconscious to desire a particular product, in the case of Godard, to adhere to a particular ideology.  However, as Godard was clever enough to make many of the commentaries contradictory, as is the case with commercially fueled capitalist outputs.  Nothing coexists with the world of Weekend, it is a fabrication to our own world of capitalism, in which no two ideologies can exist simultaneously, because to do so would ruin the competitiveness inherent to the practice.

Key Scene: The traffic jam tracking shot seen is almost incomprehensible in its magnitude and the payoff is well worth the wait.

I was lucky enough to see this a few days ago at a local theater, however, for most people this film had existed in a region lock trap of inaccessibility.  Fortunately, as of a two days ago the film was announced as an upcoming title for The Criterion Collection and should prove to be a great purchase.

Just Get Through The Goddamn Day: A Single Man (2009)

When a person approaches film narrative from a stream of conscious ideology, I often get concerned as delivering a coherent narrative is often difficult.  Of course there are exceptions to this concern, such as Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Lynch's Lost Highway.  However, it is rare for a movie to deliver stream of conscious narrative in a manner that is both accessible and perfectly poetic.  A Single Man, the debut film for Gucci designer Tom Ford, is a case where poetics and approachability combine  magically and in what could prove to be one of the most overlooked masterpieces of the past decade.  Obviously inspired by the successes of Mad Men, A Single Man focuses on the life of a professor in 1960's America at the height of Cold War fears.  Furthermore, it uses a set of respected actors who neither possess superstar images nor overact for the sake of assumed Oscar nominations.  Tom Ford's period pieces is all about subtlety and this helps the surreal nature of the film exponentially.  To add to my already exuding adoration for this film, I will state that it is precisely how a film should perform character study, by focusing on the character in a very singular and internal sense.


A Simple Man follows the course of events over a single day for the aging British professor George Falconer (Colin Firth) who is reeling from the recent loss of his partner Jim (Matthew Goode).  His loss is quite internal given the staunch conservatism which exists, even in the relatively liberal Los Angeles college community of which George teaches.  Given his depression, which has resulted from inner turmoil, George has vowed to commit suicide at the end of November 30th.  He plans to simply make it through the day and off himself with a gun, leaving everything that represented his life sitting out in his kitchen.  George begins to deal with his plan rather stoically until the world around him begins to interfere.  This begins with the inquiries of a young Jewish student about anti-semitism that leads George on a brilliant diatribe about the illogical nature of fear. After the deeply philosophical speech, George heads to his office to clean out his desk and down a fifth of whiskey.    This speech inspires a young student named Kenny (Nicholas Hoult) to approach George after class and discuss his own beliefs, as well as his past drug use.  Before parting Kenny purchases George a yellow pencil sharper as a gift for escorting him across the campus, it is quite apparent at this point that George desires Kenny.  However, realizing his purpose George leaves and stops by a liquor store to purchase gin for his former lover Charlie (Julianne Moore) of whom he was intimate with, prior to his coming out.  Upon leaving the liquor store George bumps into a young Spanish man dropping the bottle of gin and breaking it.   This accident leads to a discussion with the man named Carlos (Jon Kortajanera) who states that George is in dire need for someone to like him.  Shrugging this off indifferently, George heads home in an attempt to kill himself.  However, he finds himself unsuccessful at shooting himself and after receiving a call from Charlie decides to head to her house for a few drinks.  After dinner and a pass on the part of Charlie for sex, George leaves and heads to a bar, which him and Jim frequented.  There, by chance, he meets Kenny  again and after a drink they decide to go swimming.  During their swim at the beach George is knocked unconscious, at which point the two decide to return to George's house.  While finding a bandaid, for George,, Kenny discovers a  naked picture of Jim and proceeds to distance himself from George for the remainder of the night.  When George awakes a few hours later, he discovers Kenny lying on his sofa holding George's gun as a form of defense against his advances.  Realizing that Kenny had no desire for him, George enters his room with a new level of serenity, unfortunately, his decision to be happy is quickly followed by deathly heart attack that leaves George on the floor, which fulfilled his original plan for the day.

The film is quite impressive for its approach to a quite overlooked narrative in America prior to the 1970's, this of course being the experiences of homosexuals in the United States.  While Mad Men has dealt with this to some extent, they have never made it a matter to focus heavily on the alternative world of gay underground, let alone as a sole narrative.  Prior to a film like this, the commentary of gay life prior to Stonewall reserved for documentary filmmaking and narrative distanced from film.  I would imagine one of the biggest factors in changing this in cinema was the critical acclaim received by Brokeback Mountain.  IT is great to see a gay narrative emerge in film and even more so that it was provided with a respectable budget.  In years prior gay filmmaking was reserved to the avant-garde and experimental realms with filmmakers like Kenneth Anger and Su Friedrich leading the way.  A Single Man represents a complete change to voices about the past, as well as voices present in contemporary filmmaking.  I am glad to see films like this being made for a variety of reasons and hope the change continues, but if films like Beginners have anything to do with it, the trend is only beginning.  Sorry the criticism is not heavy in theory, but this is such an experiential film that explanation is somewhat arbitrary.

Watch this movie immediately, somehow it fell under my radar in 2009 and for that, I feel terrible.  Make sure you get a copy and share it with your friends; it is truly a visual manifesto.