Weekend marked a crucial break in the filmmaking career of Jean-Luc Godard, who'd started as the most prominent member of the French Nouvelle Vague with charming and formally innovative early films like Breathless and Band Of Outsiders. Weekend was the culmination of his career up to that point, encompassing both the formal cleverness and whimsy of the early works and the more bracing political content and distancing techniques that had begun cropping up in his work. The film's rambling, anecdotal narrative follows a bourgeosie couple as their weekend vacation slowly dissolves into a series of increasingly brutal disasters -- including a massive traffic jam displayed by a notorious patience-testing pan, and an encounter with armed, cannibalistic revolutionaries. The film is Godard's declaration of the "end of cinema," and indeed his subsequent projects were increasingly low-budget essayistic experiments in political filmmaking, very distant from the history of cinema to that point. Nonetheless, despite Godard's frustration with his chosen medium's ability to convey political messages, Weekend perfectly communicates its raw, angry condemnation of all sides of the political spectrum.
The film's importance to film history makes this essential watching, especially for those who have already sampled some earlier Godard and are curious about his more overtly political later works. This DVD presents the film perfectly, with a pristine image perfectly suited to the film's cinematographic grandeur. The best extra is an absolutely essential interview with cinematographer Raoul Coutard, who operated the camera on virtually all of Godard's films until the 80s. Coutard is thus perfectly suited to provide insight into Godard's work at this controversial point in his career, and this in-depth interview is a great asset. There's also a nice appreciation of the film by director Mike Figgis, who provides some more analytical insight about the film. Overall, a near-perfect presentation of a monumental film.