Weekend (1967)

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Writer:    Jean-Luc Godard
Cast:        Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne, Jean-Pierre Kalfon
Language: French

A French bourgeois couple's weekend trip to visit and kill wife's parents, in order to get the inheritance, turns into a never ending series of traffic jams, revolution and cannibalism. As the husband says during the film: ''What a rotten film. All we meet are crazy people'.

When it came out, the film must have been refreshingly clever with its self aware in-jokes with the audience but now it is just tiresome with only three four memorable scenes as its saving grace. There is one big monologue about the origins of class struggle from the beginning of tribes to the modern world, Nazism and hypocrisy of the imperial powers when it comes to their own cruelty. I hadn't seen a Godard film in a while and haven't seen any of his non sixties films. 67 is around the time his films supposedly became not good and he made plenty of films after this. I am in two minds as to whether I should see his later films and this film didn't do me any favors in making up my mind.

Rating: 2.5/5

Vivre Sa Vie (My Life to Live) (1962)

Director:   Jean-Luc Godard
Writers:    Jean-Luc Godard, Marcel Sacotte
Language: French
The film shows a Parisian woman's descent into prostitution in 12 unconnected chapters. Anna Karina, a fixture in Godard's earlier films and his wife at those times, plays Nana who leaves her husband and child to pursue a career as an actress. As she struggles working as a record store staff she begins life as a prostitute for money.

The characters in the film are quirky and there is no melodrama in the film. The novel like format with chapters is a regular feature in Tarantino's films. Tarantino's production company 'A Band Apart' is named after the Godard classic 'Bande a part'. Godard's playfulness with the camera and ideas reminds me of Tarantino and the impact of their films are also similar.

Rating: 4/5