Weekend and Counter-Cinema

I found Peter Wollen's article about Godard this week interesting when I first read it and far more interesting after I watched Weekend on Tuesday night. What struck me about the film was how successful it was in being an abject failure when measured in traditional cinematic value. As Wollen argued, Godard actively sought out the seven cardinal values of old cinema, took their counterparts, and implemented them into his film. I think he achieved his goal fairly well; however, I still find Weekend as a whole pretentious and unimpressive and disagree strongly with Wollen's clear infatuation for Godard's work.

Weekend certainly denies psychological identification, destroys almost all of its narrative arc, uses intentionally repetitive and unrealistic language, breaks the fourth wall and actively prevents suspension of disbelief, and strongly avoids any form of character development. Again, by all measures, this is an apt response to the industry trends identified by Corrigan (as exemplified by catastrophic flops like Heaven's Gate), but I don't see this as any incredible achievement. There is a reason why values like identification, transparency, and single diegesis existed in most films of the time and still exist today - it is because they are essential components to being moved by a film, whether the emotion felt is pleasurable or painful. A rejection of these does not create a new ideal - it creates a film whose only audience is film critics and viewers.

This new subset of film (Godard's counter-cinema, basically) is just masturbatory and serves no real purpose, in my opinion. One could see my strong response as a rejection of that which I do not understand, but I think I have a decent grasp of what Godard is attempting to say; I merely fail to see its genius. I certainly did not feel this way about Third Cinema. It may be an unusual format for a Western audience, but it has a clear purpose and a definite audience. Counter-cinema, on the other hand, has an incredibly limited audience for its supposed social commentary. Pushing the boundaries of film is certainly laudable, but only when there is a purpose beyond just seeing how much real violence can be displayed for shock value or seeing how long an uninteresting scene can be dragged out.