Last Year at Marienbad
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Movie Reviews of Last Year at Marienbad
Movie Review: THE KEY TO MARIENBAD
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie is not as obscure and incomprehensible as some reviewers here suggest, and many clues are provided to unlock its mysteries. The story is a modern retelling of a classical Greek legend. At a strange baroque resort, where people often move like mannikins or not at all, where countless repetition is the order of the day, and where people's memories have faded, a young man attempts to convince a woman that they had an affair a year before and to come away with him. If you guess that you're in the Underworld, you're on the right track. (There's even a later scene where you witness the violent deed that brought the woman to this place.) But the most important clue among many is a pair of statues in a garden. It consists of two figures in classical dress. A man, without looking back, is leading a woman, who walks behind him. Leading her out of where? Someone states that this marble couple represents King Charles III and his wife in classical dress. But you mustn't believe everything you hear. The character who identifies the statues is the Lord of this Underworld and he wants the woman to remain -- with him. His words are not to be believed or trusted. Figure out the actual identities of this marble couple, and everything in "Last Year at Marienbad" that seems incompehensible now, will suddenly make sense; you'll see the picture with new eyes. If you need futher hints, the same legend was used by director Marcel Camus in a famous 1958 Brazilian film set during the carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Jean Cocteau recreated the same myth in Paris in 1949. Tennessee Williams tackled the story as well, and two movies were later filmed, based on Williams' version, the first of which starred Marlon Brando. The difference between "Marienbad" and the four other versions mentioned is that "Marienbad" ends on a positive note before the entire legend is played out.Movie Review: Looking for meaning is beside the point
Summary: 5 Stars
If you come to this film looking for specific meanings, metaphors, or interpretations, you will miss the point, and perhaps overlook or underestimate the true value of what Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet have accomplished. LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD presents a series of purely objective images and dialogue, and leaves it up to the observer to provide subjective context. In the interplay of real and imaginary (surreal) visuals, time frames, motives, and actions, we are given the tools and cinematic equivalent of a tabula rasa in which to conjure up a plethora of meaning from our personal interior perspectives. An important scene to me is the one in which each of the main characters X, A, and later M offer their own interpretations of what a certain statue in the chateau garden represents. The meaning of human relationships, of life itself has only subjective validity.
I had watched LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD a number of times and each time come up with a new interpretation. I know that none are the correct interpretations because there really are no correct ones, but I kept trying to find one, much like the character X keeps futilely trying to beat M at the game of NIM. The last time I viewed it I stopped trying to analyze and just immersed myself in the look and feel of it. That is really what makes the film great. LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD was a ground breaking film not just for it's experimental narrative structure and opaque subtext, but for the way it was filmed, most notably it's exquisite b&w cinematography evoking surreal, de Chirico-esque garden landscapes which frame ornately decorated interiors through which the camera wanders like a soul lost in Purgatory.
Movie Review: Your time will disappear as well...
Summary: 5 Stars
Last Year at Marienbad is a puzzle, an enigma, a formal logic problem, an unsettling horror, a beautiful poem, utter nonsense, but unavoidable, unstoppable at that.This film must be seen; there is no way to explain it. It is completely sterile, emotionless, yet at the same time intense, full of more feeling than most films I've ever seen. It is a formal problem: does then exist, and if so, is then now -- and if not, how can now be, but if so, how can then be? Just like the questions it asks, the images can't remain still, never stop, don't pause to make sense, don't know what they are trying to be, or trying to help you to see. You and it are forever in motion, folding back in on yourselves. Is this a film about itself, or is this not really any film at all? Are you a viewer, or are you playing the game on the screen which never seems to end, yet ends every time the same way? Is it a game at all?
And are you feeling nothing or are you ready to explode, ready to cry out, ready to cover your eyes, ready to make a wish for her husband (Is he her husband?) or her lover (Is he her lover?) or for her (Is she really even still alive? Was she ever even really there?)... There are moments in this film that will stun you, make you flinch, make you forget that it's gone on for hours and hours already. Is that her crying out, or is it you? Is anyone crying out at all, or did it never happen, like the film itself? Once you're done, you'll wonder where the time went, even though you'll remember just how much time it took.
And you won't be able to explain it.
Insufferable. Pretentious.
Remarkable.
Movie Review: a journey into the surreal.......
Summary: 5 Stars
I first became familiar with the French New Wave, an innovative time period during the late 1950s and 1960s in Europe (specifically, in France) where filmmakers were challenging the art of telling story, through moving pictures, with bold cinematography and abstract story lines, when I watched this film. LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, a film by Alain Renais, unabashedly went where many films had gone before, but in a very distinctive way.
The gist of MARIENBAD'S storyline is common enough. The main characters are a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig), coming together at a chateau gathering. The twist is that they MAY or MAY NOT have been lovers. Though, the man insists that they were involved just the year before and that the woman had promised to run away from him and leave her husband (Sacha Pitoeff), she remains aloof and pushes him away. One has to wonder what the true nature of their relationship was--even if their relationship was consensual.
I couldn't write a review on this piece and not mention the exceptionally intriguing cinematography. Particularly, there is one very well-known scene involving the main characters in a garden, lined with geometrically pruned shrubs. Nothing says rigid convention like angular topiary art! What's more, the camera angles, paired with the music, create a very menacing and trancelike atmosphere for the viewer. I really feel that Renais did this to hypnotize and confuse the audience. I came away feeling more than a little altered. Nevertheless, the film remains unforgettable to me, nearly thirteen years later.
Movie Review: Due for re-release
Summary: 5 Stars
I was premature in predicting an imminent release in the following paragraph posted back in 2005, but my reasonong was sound, and Criterion has at last owned up to a pending release in 2009. See http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/976
I won't attempt to add to several previous reviews, some quite cogent, of this extraordinary and haunting film except to acknowledge that what I find hypnotic other viewers may find soporific. For those who love the flick and have despaired of tracking down a copy (or for those who, like me, are stuck with the mediocre Fox Lorber edition), I'm pleased to report that the title has lately appeared on the Rialto Pictures website as a "future release." Rialto has secured the rights to many an arthouse legend, and most of these have thus far been released to DVD under the Criterion imprimatur. There are accordingly grounds to hope that this year or next we may see Amazon offer an edition with the "Full Critey" treatment--anamorphic, lovingly restored and laden with extras, one would hope. I would accordingly hold off on purchasing a used copy at the extortionate tariffs presently cited (they started at about $200 last year; presently down to $80) for the Fox Lorber product, and look instead to snag the Criterion edition within a year or thereabouts. You've waited 44 years, after all--what's another ten to eighteen months?