MYOFNF #4: Weekend (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)

I can hear the howls of outrage from film snobs tear across the internets. "Weekend? You're diving into Godard and you start with Weekend? That's from his late-60s crazy Maoist phase! Why not Breathless? Why not Band of Outsiders? You suck, internet-based movie douche!" Yes, yes, I'm well aware that Godard's most revered films are his earliest ones, but having read a little about Weekend, I have to say it interested me more than a lot of the other options. There's a long-ass tracking shot (one of my favorite things in film) and hand-handed leftist agitprop. I'll get to Breathless later.

This is the first film I've watched during this project that really hit me in the gut. Godard is saying, in no uncertain terms, that western consumer society is dying, that cinema is dying, and that the only thing that will come afterwards is a hellish, blackened terrain of cannibalism and inhumanity. He obliterates every rule of narrative storytelling, breaking the fourth wall, grinding the film to a halt to allow characters to spout Marxist rhetoric for minutes on end, almost daring the viewer to stop watching. Godard is telling the audience that every cheap thrill they yearn to experience at the movies is trite and meaningless and the very format of narrative cinema an enabler of exploitation. Then, there are stunning scenes of visceral power, especially that amazing tracking shot of a massive traffic jam in the French countryside. It all feels incredibly dated and vitally relevant at the same time. Obviously, the political and artistic gotterdamerung that Godard envisioned hasn't happened yet. Still, watching the scenes of frantic, greed-crazed middle class boors mindlessly crashing their cars into each other it's hard not to think of the petrol-stinking corridors of America's exurbs. It's like an arthouse Deathrace 2000. Watching Weekend makes me want to watch those early, classic Godard films, but it also, perversly makes me want to watch the supposedly unwatchable early-70s left wing propaganda he made. Clearly, Godard was going through some sort of artistic and political crisis during the making of this movie, and watching someone with a clear genius for film technique try to smash the very notion of film in order to satisfy his raging urge to smash capitalism is exhilerating.