Last Year at Marienbad
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Movie Reviews of Last Year at Marienbad
Movie Review: Brave and unique experiment in cinematic narrative technique
Summary: 4 Stars
Tired of feeling blase about the movies you see? Unable to remember details about them? Look no further, you will definitely remember this movie (if you can sit through it without managing to throw the nearest heavy, metallic object through your TV screen!), and you will either love it or loathe it; this is anything but run-of-the-mill or forgettable.
To describe Last Year at Marienbad is extremely difficult other than to say the movie should be seen as an experiment in cinematic narrative. It is among other things, mostly a depiction of memory, fantasy, imagination, detailed description and emotional distance on film. To some it will seem like a bold experiment, while just as many people, if not more, will think it bizarre and pretentious.
For the first two thirds of the way at least, you will feel indifferently toward the characters even if you are enthralled by the plot ... which is doubtful. Even the most patient viewer will sometimes wonder about the point of making a movie like this. Action-packed this definitely is not. Nor is it dramatic, sexy, suspenseful, stressful, unsettling or any other word one uses to describe human emotions. Most of the time the characters display hardly any emotion at all. Odd, considering allusions to possible marital infidelity, the possibility of psychological illness and one character all but stalking another. Often the people seem more like mannequins or props than actors. Many a shot looks like a tableau in which barely anyone or anything moves. Wind, footfalls, breathing, vocal inflections -- for the most part these are absent. It is set in an opulent mansion and shot with a cold, Versailles-like formal symmetry, and the story is told mainly vocally, rather than visually, using a mostly low-key, evocative narration and accompanied and punctuated with organ music that seems like it was taken from a silent horror movie.
Yet, despite it all, I found it fascinating and hypnotic. Whether others will like it is extremely difficult to say. As for the moral of the story ...? Well, good luck with all of that.
Leave it to the French to make a movie that seems almost devoid of plot, conflict and emotion. Just like a French author produced a 200-plus page novel, a couple of years ago, that did not contain a single verb. Strange? Yes. Brave? Also. But in the case of Last Year at Marienbad, I leave it to each individual viewer to decide if the experiment succeeded.
Movie Review: BOO YA! This movie is AWESOME!
Summary: 4 Stars
After I got out of the hospital last fall I decided to do a bunch of things I'd been meaning to do but hadn't ever done. The first was eat eggs. Mission accomplished. (I don't know why I'd been avoiding eggs all those years. They're actually pretty good!) The second was to see "Last Year at Marienbad," since I'd heard that it was the ultimate "art" movie, and all my friends who'd seen it were, like, "Dude, that movie makes no sense!" Well, I knew everyone had to be wrong on both counts, since "Begotten" is still the ultimate art movie, since it's mostly just grainy black and white images squirming around together, and even though I couldn't understand it, it gave me terrible nightmares for months afterward. And I knew that this movie couldn't make any less sense than "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." Still, I wanted to see this flick and see what all the hoopla was about. Dude, this movie is AWESOME! I don't know what my friends were all talking about. It makes PERFECT sense. It's all in black and white. Everybody speaks like they're doped up on Thorazine (which, after being in the hospital for a whole summer I know a little something about). That hot lady from "La rouge aux lèvres" is in it, only with black hair instead of blond. This dude does this game with matchsticks that only he can win. There's freaky organ music playing during the whole movie. What could make any LESS sense? This movie is all there, dude! You just have to be open to its subliminal messages. Believe me, it's totally awesome! You just have to view it with an open mind.Movie Review: Last Year at Marienbad
Summary: 4 Stars
Is this their last year at Marienbad? Or was this their last year at Marienbad? The title itself is ambigious as is the film. After viewing I dug up a copy of the original screenplay by Grillet which had a nice introduction to the film. Basically they both had the desire to create a film with a new 'form' that being to avoid all conventions of regular cinema - instead of phone rings, man picks up phone, man says hello - there would be no such logical, linear structure to Marienbad. Grillet wrote not only the basic 'story' but also included many of the camera set-ups as well in his own primitive way and he states that almost all of them were used when possible, Resnais never changed them on a whim but only when they were not possible due to architectural boundries or economical boundries, etc. The film succesfully captures this idea of a fragmented dream or a repeating memory but with no clues as to whether we are seeing the past, the present, or the future. Beautifully filmed and edited, the visual style of the film holds up 40 years later and in fact is far superior to 99% of the films you will see today.The film is difficult but definately a brilliant work. It is unfortunate that the DVD quality is indeed poor - non-anamorphic and also quite pixelated in some places although thankfully it's worse at the front end so it is less noticable as you go on.
I'm sure it looks much better than a VHS copy but it's certain they could make a better transfer of this movie for DVD.
Movie Review: Interesting and rather creepy
Summary: 4 Stars
The movie has very nice photography, especially if you like rococo settings (it may be French Baroque, but it is rococo in its effect here). There is no straightforward plot movement, little dialogue and an extended monologue and because the camera lingers on the many tableaux the film seems to drag. These factors make it rather difficult to watch the film in one sitting. Nevertheless, the movie has an interesting cumulative effect and several `inside' references (despite a denial of this by the scriptwriter, Robbe-Grillet); the surroundings are a dominant part of the cast. There is something inhuman and disturbing about the style (which goes under, I think, objectivism, and was in vogue in the `anti-novel' of Robbe-Grillet and others in the 60's and 70's.) and the movie is a good working out of this philosophy.
And, despite all I said above, it is entertaining.
Movie Review: Brilliantly disturbing
Summary: 4 Stars
Resnais takes his viewers into a world where time and space have no meaning. Sentences begin on a balcony and end a year later(?) on a grand stair case. This haunting story(?) of a man's attempt to convince a woman that they had an affair the previous year defies any traditional filmic explanation and soars because of it. Eerily similar to Kubrick's The Shining on a formal level, the most intimate of conflicts boils under the surface of liesurely decadence. The visuals are astounding, and moreso because of Resnais' masterly use of black and white. The acting is, however, a bit stiff, even for cinema vérité. The hotel where this non-narrative develops seems more alive than the people who inhabit it. In any case, This film is a must for any who enjoy a intellegent filmic experience.