Last Year at Marienbad
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Movie Reviews of Last Year at Marienbad
Movie Review: Unutterable elegance
Summary: 5 Stars
Whatever this is about, once you've seen it, you'll know you've seen something. What I mean is, whatever else you've ever seen, this is something else. Setting aside the helpful and fascinating extra features that came with my disc, by someone called Ginette Vincendeau, and suspending any attempt at prosaic understanding while watching, soak up the incomparable sensation of atmosphere, the sonorous sounds, the stunning sights, the sublimely stylish manner in which the images unroll. It almost makes the effort of interpretation unnecessary. But then, watch it again, and listen to all the explanations offered on all sides: hardly anyone can help coming up with their own ideas. And they are almost all different, since every viewpoint will alter the perspective of any object. There's the viewer who tells us it's actually the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. (Jan 2007: since what he says really does make excellent sense, I feel compelled to acknowledge him and point to his review. He is Robert Amsel; see his review of December 3, 2002.)
That long, tall, thin, skeletal fellow is Death, who could lose, but always wins. This place is Limbo: the Underworld, where memory is erased, and time and place have no meaning, make no sense. Could definitely be. Why does Death say he could lose? Answer: Amor Vincit Omnia. There are slight hints of Cinderella and her slipper; or the awakening of the Sleeping Beauty. The Life Force defeating Death and escaping from his dreary clasp. This is partly what Ginette puts forward. But she admits, I think, that this is too mechanical a reading; like the marionette-like dance, and the empty pleasantries of the half-heard conversations. This is a game, within a play, within a film, within a theatre, or on an unanticipated dvd. These people exist at one of civilization's high points, the eighteenth century enlightenment, baroque at the point of rococo, where order is everything, yet giving way to distortion. Or else they are an image of everyday life, its forms and conventions: this is a dateless reality of actually unrealized desires. Watch it a third time, and it becomes erotic. It is the product of a totally European sensibility, a specifically Franco-Germanic sensibility: America is far too adolescent a society ever to have created anything to equal it, in spite of Ginette's instancing Hitchcock, and Kubrick's "The Shining" --- which is lamentably feeble in its supposed emulation. It is easy to recognize genius: you know that however hard you might try, you would never come up with anything to match it.
Movie Review: One of the most beautiful ...
Summary: 5 Stars
This I believe is one of the greatest films ever made - and I reckon one of the most beautiful ones. 45 years old and seems like has been made yesterday. It is just timeless, very much its content.
In just one sentence, this film is like reflections from to parallel mirrors, they end up in eternity. With man and woman simply becoming Adam and Eve. And these reflection while in a sense, reflect real objects, after being repeated so many times, look absurd.
Film starts with narration of the main character reading text which I call poem, while camera aimlessly wanders around corridors and halls of a Gothic hotel/mansion where the rest of the movie takes place. All in the same place. And after the first scene, we find that it was part of a play that were being played for entertainment of the guests. And we think the rest will be more mainstream. But soon we realize the rest is just the same.
Everything seems to be frozen, words spoken except from two main characters formless and hardly bear any meaning. Music is just formless harmonies played on organ, sometimes with a hint of sadness and sometimes hint of being content and in occasions like it forecasts a tragedy. A few times it looks buoyant but we soon realise we were mistaken.
There is a strange garden, and pictures of this garden everywhere. Some old and gothic, some modern. Statues and people do not differ much, all the same vague, full of mystery to the verge absurdity. Games played are endless and absurd, always the same person wins and all look like each other whether played by cards or matches. Actually all actions gradually becomes ritualistic and even religious. With laying down cards, photos and matches in rows of 1, 3, 5 and 7. Absurd like a ritual, a game that is played only to lose and there is no way to win but this fact mysteriously hidden. Like life itself.
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Film alternates between frozen images of actors just staying motionless, and a romantic story between a man that believe has seen the married woman a year ago (or even before!) and woman does not recognize her, and last year they almost had an affair. Not that this story by itself makes much sense as a story but actually more portrays the paradoxical and ambivalent emotions of desire and commitment.
This movie is a journey and I encourage everyone to try it. It has just come out on DVD rental.
Movie Review: Or was it Frederiksbad?
Summary: 5 Stars
Based on a story (if you want to call it that) by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Resnais' *Last Year at Marienbad* remains the ultimate expression of the French New Wave. Which means, for me at least, it's one of the all-time greats. For others, such a description is either meaningless or anathema...The repetitive, hypnotic narration, together with the trippy organ score, accompany the camera as it glides Steadicam-like through an icily baroque hotel. Things settle down soon enough and we get involved in the story of a man (the narrator) who's convinced he had an affair with a beautiful young guest at the hotel (a brunette Delphine Seyrig) the year before. Here's a tip for those yet to be initiated into the films of Resnais: the director's pet theme is the malleability of memory. Therefore, what happened "last year at Marienbad" (neither of the principals are sure if it was Marienbad, Frederiksbad, or some other spa) is not so important, at least in terms of what the movie's trying to get at, as what WILL happen THIS year at Marienbad or wherever. The movie's been termed as the ultimate puzzle-picture, but the word "puzzle" indicates that there's a solution. Those trying to solve the puzzle of Albertazzi's and Seyrig's combined memories may as well have a 20-sided Rubik's Cube to work with. With *Marienbad*, Resnais audaciously challenged conventional techniques of storytelling and came up with something shockingly new. Sadly, this brilliant, legendary director has been for the most part forgotten, but this particular work of his is still remembered even by only half-serious movie buffs. (A friend of mine once asked of me: "Isn't that the flick where everyone looks like they're in a cologne commercial?" At the very least, *Marienbad* represents the American conception of the stereotypical "foreign" film!) Because of his genuinely groundbreaking films of the late 50's on through the 60's, Alain Resnais, it seems to me, must be accounted as one of the most innovative creative minds in the history of Art. Buy *Last Year at Marienbad* and see what I'm talking about. [The DVD is by Fox-Lorber -- 'nuff said. Meaning, it's TERRIBLE. The transfer is pixelly, the compositions look watery. But enough of the photographic magnificence remains to justify purchase. No features, natch... What the dealio?]Movie Review: Essential viewing for cinephiles
Summary: 5 Stars
A man approaches a woman. He tells her of a past liaison they've had but can't recall all the details. She has no memory of this past. The scene is repeated in a different setting, sometimes the garden, sometimes a corridor or the dining room, but always at the hotel where they are staying. Every time they see each other additional details of this possible affair are provided but we're never sure of their veracity. Occasionally a second man, who might be the woman's husband, is with her. Sometimes the men are at a table playing a variety of games, one of which initially seems without rules and which a beginner can never win, according to the speculation we overhear in the background (later we overhear that a beginner always wins but this is never demonstrated).
Each shot is very carefully composed. Often the only movement is the camera's as it slowly glides between the actors, who are frequently motionless, resembling well-dressed mannequins. The effect is like moving through a photograph, unpacking the details of a moment in time.
Is it all a dream? Is the man's account of the past true? Is he manipulating the woman or is she just pretending that she can't remember any of his stories?
TimeOut's annual film guide describes the film as "either some sort of masterpiece or meaningless twaddle." The film requires patience to sit through. It seems to have a language of its own and how you judge it will partly depend on the effort you are willing to exert to learn this language. Time, memory, perception - all are manipulated in the film, preventing the formation of a solid foothold for understanding and suggesting that the process of cognition is the film's true subject. Through both its use of the medium and choice of subject matter, Last Year at Marienbad pushed the boundaries of cinema to another level. It is an important viewing experience in the education of a film lover.
Interestingly, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay - something that seems unthinkable in the artistically conservative climate of today's mainstream.
Movie Review: Look'n For A Heartbeat
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is a masterpiece of the French New Wave and of just experimental film in general. Every single shot is beautifully framed and offers more with each repeated viewing. Adding depth and intrigue only the way a great film is able to. My only complaint (agruably a niave one), is that there is little to no acting or plot. Now being a huge Tarkovsky fan, I don't mind the lack of linear plot but even Zerkalo had wonderful acting. Many of the scenes is Marienbad consist of everyone in a room being "frozen in time" with only the two main characters, Mr. X and Mrs. A, being able to move. Most of the film consists of narration over seemingly random scenes while Mr. X tries to convince Mrs. A that they had an affair last year at Mariendbad.
She bounces between playing hard to get and telling him off throughout. There is little to no acting because everyone displays such a stone face in the film (which is the piont), but it does create a very cold atmosphere. Throughtout the film, there is only one person who even raises their voice and only then it's once. One of the pionts of the film is the utter coldness and statuesque state of all the characters; however, this film like many other artfilms makes you ask the question "does it resonate with my soul" and thereby take it from the pretencious, seeminly meaningless state that first presents itself and raise it to the level of a true work or art. For me I'm somewhere in between, like I said before I have no problem acknowledging this as a masterpiece, however the cold, desolation doesn't quite "resonate with my soul". I need more acting and human emotion to round it out in my opinion.
But regardless, I highly recomming this for anyone interested in the Nouvelle Vague style or in Experimental films or just someone who prides themself on being a cinephile seeing as this, quite ironically (being based on a novel), is truly one of only films that is pure cinema meaning the visual style and sense can only be expressed on celluoid.