Week end (1967)
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Actors: Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne
Runtime: 105 min
A couple prepares for the weekend. He doesn’t love her, she doesn’t love him. Both have someone on the side and wish that the other gets killed. This weekend they are going to the hospital where her father is dying, in order to secure their part of the inheritance. Their trip quickly gets stuck because of the traffic jams and road accidents. Every encounter ends in violence, and as time passes the whole bourgeois society is literally falling apart around them, in front of them and with them.
This couple represents a mirror of the entire society, and the breakdown of society is a reflection of their inner dehumanization, and vice versa. The movie is absurd because their habits, desires and dreams are absurd. Godard shows what would happen if the alienation and bitterness we feel in ourselves suddenly spilled into the streets and roads.
Hollywood usually encourages us to turn off our brains and relax with a movie. Godard doesn’t allow it. He wants to discuss with the audience about the philosophical, ethical and ideological bankruptcy of Western civilization. This movie is a provocation. This movie is a slap in the face of the viewer. This movie tells the spectator to pull himself together, and encourages him to examine himself and the society in which he lives, but in that it succeeds only partially, and temporarily.
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