tbaltmail We open up with a voyeuristic description of a sexual encounter, then hit the road to hell with a couple devoid of any semblance of consideration or respect for others. Various chaotic and surreal events ensue, all framed within a world of fatal traffic accidents in locations where it should be pretty unlikely for them to occur - maybe an observation on the terrible road safety reputation of France at the time, as well as fitting in with the overall theme? Brilliant and deranged movie with savage humour and it's fair share of depravity and "WTF" moments.... You're always wondering what sort of carnage or strangeness is up ahead.... Oh, and it's also nostalgic eye-candy for those who remember the quirky French vehicles of the time, with a wide selection on view....

Buzz (DaytonaBob) Goddard is a genius? SERIOUSLY? This waste of time is violent, disgusting and any political message he is trying to portray as some sort end of the world scenario is total B******T.As I read reviews going on and on about what brilliant movie making I thought these people sound like the idiots I went to college with who would go on and on and on about a 40 minute movie showing a wall they stared at and had the supreme gall to call it incredibly thoughtful and a statement on...well stupidity in my opinion.The nonstop murders, rape that borders on bestiality, eating people is without a doubt some of the most pointless nonsense I've ever seen. The worst is Goddard seems to think killing animals live on screen is great entertainment. His "characters" slaughter a live pig on screen, rabbit and various other disgusting killings. Basically this is a snuff film that sophomoric people sit around drinking and getting high while calling it brilliant is probably the best sense of the demise of civilization that people would call Goddard a great film maker.Nope just a pretentious bit of garbage that was a waste of money and time. A better film would be showing Goddard a victim of his own entertainment and being slaughtered live on screen as punishment for making such drivel.Just goes to show that if you buy into this kind of hype you'll buy into anything without thinking.

Jackson Booth-Millard From director Jean-Luc Godard (À Bout De Soufflé (Breathless), Alphaville, Pierrot Le Fou), this French film from the book of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die was rated the full five out of five stars by critics, so I hoped it would deserve that when I watched it. Basically French middle class married couple the Durands, Corinne (Mireille Darc) and Roland (Jean Yanne) seem to be on an idyllic weekend trip, but in fact each have a secret lover, and each is planning to murder the other, but until then they are on a road trip heading for Corinne's parents' house in the country to secure her inheritance from her dying father, they are prepared to murder him if necessary. The journey is riddled with nightmare occurrences as they travel through the French countryside, including meeting various bizarre characters, a never ending traffic jam caused by a violent road accident, their own car is destroyed, there is a revolution going on, they kill a few people that get in their way, and generally it feels that consumer preoccupations are causing the French bourgeois society is collapsing around them. Eventually though Corrine and Roland arrive at her parents' house, only to find the father has died and the mother is refusing to share any inheritance, so they kill her and go back on the road, only to be taken by a group of hippie revolutionaries, who fend for themselves stealing, and with cannibalism, in their camp is where the film ends. The two leads are pretty much responsible for carrying the film, there are no other supporting characters that stay on screen for long but certainly make enough of a impression, I admit I found it a little hard to follow in places, but I got the gist of it, the most memorable sequence is the long and uncut tracking traffic jam scene as various vehicles and people are stuck, I can see reasons the critics praise it, so it is certainly a watchable drama. Good!

Steve Pulaski With a film like Weekend firmly secured under his belt, it's truly no wonder why French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard has gone on to live in the hearts and minds of cinephiles young and old. Godard predicates himself off of convention-annihilation, otherwise known as destroying silently-accepted norms of filmmaking and with Weekend, it feels as if he held a book of cinematic conventions in his hand and went page-by-page, tearing each page out and proceeding to rip it up with great force.Running with this simile, Godard replaces each ripped-page with a page written all his own - pages that, unlike the predecessors, shatters all preconceived notions and silently-accepted conventions of cinema. The result is his 1967 film Weekend, a film that is one of the hardest pictures I've ever had to review or analyze. I suppose one could go through the film scene-by-scene and meticulously analyze what each one had to offer, but even that may make it difficult to come to conclusion. In my mind, it's best to watch Weekend from a distance and allow it to tamper with your mind and unfold like a violent trainwreck right before your eyes.We follow, through the best and worst of times, a French, bourgeois married couple, Roland (Jean Yanne) and Corinne (Mireille Darc). After a lengthy monologue involving Corinne describe, in great detail, a sexual experience in a way that is equal parts erotic and haunting, so begins their journey to Corinne's parents' countryhouse in order out collect her dying father's inheritance. If worse comes to worse, the couple plans to marry the man in order to collect the money as soon as possible.The trip is a chaotic one to say the least, beautiful in a disturbing way and disturbing in a beautiful way. The couple drive through the countryside of France, witnessing all accounts of shallow human materialism and the pitiful ugliness of western civilization in the form of angry, restless citizens, violent acts committed over relatively trivial occurrences, and several car wrecks and burning vehicles scattered on the side of the road.Arguably the most iconic shot of Godard's entire career is the lengthy tracking shot following a traffic jam for approximately three-hundred meters. The shot lasts about seven minutes and is captured at a small distance from the traffic, and shows the congested right-lane up close while the left lane is vacant and shows Roland and Corinne cruising at a controlled speed while seemingly removing the chaos from their mind.In this shot, like almost every other shot in Weekend, one could determine its meaning in several ways. Too me, Godard seems to be using these two characters' nonchalant and unfazed reactions to a violent traffic jam as a commentary for the desensitization of westerners in the regard that so much tragedy and evil happens at an excelling rate, looking away or just moving along with the tragedy and catastrophic events seems to be the easiest way to go about things. In present day society, things like mass shootings, war, poverty, and other forms of social ugliness have plagued newspapers and TV stations worldwide, so with constant ugliness around us, it's as if looking the other way is what we are best at.Godard's tracking shot brilliantly shows this in a way that some will find excessive and others will find astounding. Godard also uses his trademarks here to further destroy conventional cinema, such as flashing title-cards on screen that may or may not have to do with the subject matter, frequent jump cuts, unsteady shots, and some of the coldest depictions of society I have yet to see. The end of the film shows numerous people and animals slaughtered for what reward? Serviceable food rations and some sort of celebratory ritual amongst a group of anarchists that spout incoherent speeches about what appears to be a cross between appreciation for the land as well as control over it? It's dark and often hard to watch.With that being said, to call Weekend a tough sit for one-hundred and four minutes is almost an understatement. I emerge with the same remarks I had about Godard's directorial debut Breathless in that I had more fun writing the review and talking about the film than I did actually enduring it. With his frequent interjection of title cards, jump cuts, overlapping and fading sound mixing, among many other unconventional tactics, it's as if Godard, in the wake of creating one of France's most provocative and daring films, is also trying to create one of the country's most unwatchable pictures in history. If the subject matter wasn't enough, you have a presentation equal to a waiter spilling hot soup on your lap at a diner - it's a disruption to what you expect and it's thoroughly uncomfortable.But that's what you get with Weekend and what you take away from the film Godard doesn't seem to mind much. Whether you see it as a critique of bourgeois society, a magnifying glass on the hellish state of blue collar society, how bourgeois society views the lower classes, or a depiction of the disgusting materialism of western culture (or a combination of the aforementioned ingredients like myself), it would appear that Godard doesn't mind what you find in it. Thinking about it at great length, I'm almost certain he doesn't care if you watch it to begin with or emerge with something to contemplate. In a way, that would be the same kind of selfishness that Godard seems to be condemning in this picture. Who says what you have to take away and how you have to take it?