INTO THE SWAMP

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I last saw (well, experienced) Jean-Luc Godard’s apocalyptic death-to-cinema-and-capitalism-tour-de-motherfucking-force Week End at ATP in December, where my friend and I made crafted a genius double bill of it with Big Trouble in Little China. Those films are in no way both sides of the same coin aside from being awesome but my friend Dave pointed out on Twitter that Godard’s film would make an appropriate double-bill with David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis. Like Week End, Cosmopolis is a film that seems to exist in a dully fantastic movie version of real life - a greenscreened New York where stretch limousines double as stock market floors and earthbound makeshift spaceships, where highly paid professionals have nonsensical job titles like “Chief of Theory” (my favourite joke in the movie, even for a film that doesn’t make jokes), where entire stocks liquidize to anything but hysterical panic. Both films have their actors delivering dialogue that places emphasis on syntax rather than words, with said delivery approaching the anhedonic. Both films are episodic and concerned more with ideas than narrative, which is amusing seeing how both films decide to limp to the finish line, ignoring there is no need for a fullstop after two hours of exclamation points. In Week End, it’s marked by a too-long turn into viscera; same with Cosmopolis, except that it also pushes something approaching noticeable human emotions into the final reel. Even with Paul Giamatti doing some Real Acting, it’s overly jarring, suddenly awakening a need for conventional narrative closure that’s impossible to have without a conventional narrative in the first place. They’re both beautiful films, obtuse as all hell and uncompromising - they’re what I want from this type of cinema, basically. Also: BOLANO BOYZ REPPIN’. LIT CREW. 900 PAGES AND RUNNIN’. Week End should not be confused with Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, a film with actual relatable human emotions in it and with many ideas of its own. (It’s lovely and you should rent it straight away.)

I last saw (well, experienced) Jean-Luc Godard’s apocalyptic death-to-cinema-and-capitalism-tour-de-motherfucking-force Week End at ATP in December, where my friend and I made crafted a genius double bill of it with Big Trouble in Little China. Those films are in no way both sides of the same coin aside from being awesome but my friend Dave pointed out on Twitter that Godard’s film would make an appropriate double-bill with David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis.

Like Week End, Cosmopolis is a film that seems to exist in a dully fantastic movie version of real life - a greenscreened New York where stretch limousines double as stock market floors and earthbound makeshift spaceships, where highly paid professionals have nonsensical job titles like “Chief of Theory” (my favourite joke in the movie, even for a film that doesn’t make jokes), where entire stocks liquidize to anything but hysterical panic.

Both films have their actors delivering dialogue that places emphasis on syntax rather than words, with said delivery approaching the anhedonic. Both films are episodic and concerned more with ideas than narrative, which is amusing seeing how both films decide to limp to the finish line, ignoring there is no need for a fullstop after two hours of exclamation points. In Week End, it’s marked by a too-long turn into viscera; same with Cosmopolis, except that it also pushes something approaching noticeable human emotions into the final reel. Even with Paul Giamatti doing some Real Acting, it’s overly jarring, suddenly awakening a need for conventional narrative closure that’s impossible to have without a conventional narrative in the first place. They’re both beautiful films, obtuse as all hell and uncompromising - they’re what I want from this type of cinema, basically. Also: BOLANO BOYZ REPPIN’. LIT CREW. 900 PAGES AND RUNNIN’.

Week End should not be confused with Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, a film with actual relatable human emotions in it and with many ideas of its own. (It’s lovely and you should rent it straight away.)

(Source: auteurasaurus, via branduponthebrain)

  1. intotheswamp reblogged this from branduponthebrain and added:
    I last saw (well, experienced) Jean-Luc Godard’s apocalyptic death-to-cinema-and-capitalism-tour-de-motherfucking-force...
  2. nonsensemarcos reblogged this from alphasoixante
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  6. johncdutcher reblogged this from branduponthebrain and added:
    I’ve been trying to get a copy of this for months. saw it in class a couple years ago and I always get flashbacks from...
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