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February 18, 2005
Week End and Antonin Artaud
Our viewing of Godard's "Week End" was painful but like true cinema fans we got through the absurdist film and tried to understand why this flick is so important for film studies. I have thought about how the film does anticipate the deconstructive work of Derrida and the "post-modern-condition" by taking material out of any narrative sequence or familiar context and shuffling the images and dialogues into a stream of consciousness flow with a decidedly dystopic tone. In other words, a really bad trip. We did notice an allusion to Lewis Carroll and wasn't Alice's journey equally disorienting and disturbing? I am also reminded of the work of the wildman of French theatre, Antonin Artaud, who originated the "theatre of cruelty" which presented the audience with very assaultive, revolting and terrorizing presentations that were to work on the unconscious in some kind of liberating fashion. Anne challenged the claim that this could in anyway be therapeutic since, unlike the catharsis in Greek drama, for instance, Week End does not allow for any identification or empathy. By blocking us from the normative ego functions of plot, causation or meaning we are thrown into the nightmarish condition of images that tear apart "thinking" rather than aid in its implimentation. Last night I would have said this all seemed like a waste of time but I must say that many of these images have become more powerful in my memory due to their decontextualization. Maybe there is something to the notion that creativity can be liberated when meaning hungry desire is foiled.
Posted by lyceum at February 18, 2005 07:43 PM
Comments
The absurd, the funny & the silly
While watching Weekend, it occurred to me that not all absurdism works. There was a moment or two in the movie when I began to feel, "Oh no, now this is just getting silly." But the movie never devolved into pure silliness, so I think it was good absurdism. But what's good about good absurdism? Lazslo noted that Weekend shared in some ways the sense of humor found in Monty Python stuff, yet Monty Python is funny (many think that anyway, and I wouldn't say Monty Python is sadly "silly" in the sense above) and Weekend is not really funny - it's seriously absurd. I think one value of absurdity is that it awakens your mind from the normal, it loosens you up, which can actually be relaxing. That is, if you let it. We demand coherent stories from movies, and may be more overwhelmed by the "pointlessness" of an absurd film. Another thing the absurdism does in Weekend: in frustrating our demand for a story, the filmic qualities come to the fore, and isn't that when a film is being its own particular art? Like Greenaway said (paraphrasing, but not much), if you want a story, read a book. I'm not completely convinced by Greenaway's attitude in this statement, but I think there's something to it. - Drew
Posted by: Drew at February 25, 2005 09:52 AM