Actors: Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
I've commented before that I should not hold older films accountable for sins of future films. But I'm about to with the hateful and plotless Weekend - for starters, Weekend breaks the fourth wall several times, and I hate fourth wall breaking, it's insanely lazy and uncreative. The fact that there's even a term for it that you and I all know says enough. It may have been radical to suggest that actors are aware they are in a film in 1967 (I doubt it, but it may have been), but now it just comes across as sloven filmmaking - the explanation of the joke to make sure we're all in on it.
Satires of the bourgoisie are also insanely easy - show them as hateful, vain, degraded, debauched, animalistic, it's a real crowd pleaser. Set them against the joy/wonders that art creates and the production of the farmer. Wouldn't it be great if we were all artist/farmers? I sure think so.
I debated whether or not to turn the film off - finally someone said something like, 'I can't take anymore!' and I realized that I couldn't either. Godard may elevate the artist in this film and he is a great one himself, but in making Weekend he forgot the first rule of art - art has to be engrossing and it has to be interesting to someone else other than the artist.
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what about ferris bueller's fourth-wall breaks? i liked feeling like i was in on rascally ferris' escapades...
ReplyDeletethose are creative, i liked those as well. woody allen has some good ones too. monty python - well, theirs are hit or miss. in this movie it struck me as particularly bad.
ReplyDeleteyou are a moron!
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