Week End
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Year Released: 1967
Rating: 2.0
I think the male lead says it best (although a tad harshly): "What a rotten film. All we meet are crazy people." So goes this critique of capitalism by Godard, which makes its point within the first twenty minutes (life is brutal and confusing, love is perverted) and then (literally) beats it to death. The tracking shot that covers the infamous traffic jam is an impressive technical feat, and Godard's absurdist sense of humor (paint used instead of blood, the consumer culture 'literally' consuming itself - a grim gag echoed later in Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover), but when he (so often) goes overboard with the didacticism - having characters recite chunks of poetry or give lengthy dissertations on the flaws of the West - he's just that grouchy, tenured professor who won't shut up. It's inferior - to me, at least - to Tout Va Bien.
