Weekend (1967)

Jean-Luc Godard's vision of a bourgeois apocalypse, Weekend savages consumer society and gleefully deconstructs narrative. A typical middle-class couple's casual sojourn into the country lands them in the most nightmarish traffic jam in history. In a single, 10-minute long dolly shot, Godard reveals a seemingly interminable snarl of smashed and burning cars, bored motorists, and dead bodies. The couple then finds themselves mixed up with a band of forest-dwelling Maoists who rape, loot, and cannibalize. As in much of Godard's late 1960s work, a plot summary only hints at the film's rebellious absurdity. Constructed as a series of digressions, the film shatters all cinematic conventions. Characters directly address the camera (at one point, the male protagonist complains to the audience about how ludicrous the film is, at another an African garbage collector with no obvious connection to the film speaks his mind to an off-camera interviewer); music wells up at inappropriate times only to stop suddenly; and the camera spins and moves without any respect for traditional cinema space. Although the film is dated by its valorization of the once-fashionable ideology of Maoism, its cathartic chaos and experimental style still make Weekend a wicked romp for the cinematically adventurous. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide