Muriel
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Movie Reviews of Muriel
Movie Review: Muriel on DVD
Summary: 5 Stars
Muriel is a complex and strong movie that touches upon several themes like alienation, memory and identity, and it is considered part of the french new wave. It's not as experimental as Marienbad, and it has a different style than Hiroshima (it's in colour to begin with), but is as spellbinding. The DVD is a little short on extras (an interview which was quite good), and I prefer white to yellow subtitles, but the transfer is good. Recommended.Movie Review: Reality vs Memory of It
Summary: 4 Stars
"Muriel" (1963) directed by Alain Resnais is a drama about the persistence of memory (aren't all Resnains' films? Incidentally, I named my review of "Hiroshima Mon Amour" that I saw about two years ago, "Persistence of Memory".)
Muriel of the title is dead by the time the movie begins, the victim of torture by the French soldiers during the occupation of Algeria. One of the soldiers, Bernard, is back in France living with his step-mother, Helene (Delphine Seyrig) in the province city Boulogne and hunted by the memories of war and Muriel. Helen deals with her own past and memories of Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Kérien), an ex-lover who comes from Paris to visit her in the company of his new 20-years-old girlfriend, Françoise (Nita Klein)
The story which Resnais tells is simple and the trailer for the movie gives a viewer a very good idea of what they are about to see: The Past. The present. The future - is it possible? Uncertainty. Suspicions. Lies. Four main characters, Helene, Alphonse, Bertrand, and Françoise are in search of what they are. There will be secrets and confessions. Is that time to love? The main theme of the film is reality vs. memory of it. Can we always trust ourselves with what we remember? Does our memory reflect the events the way they really happened or our vision of them is altered as time passes and new realities inevitably enter our lives?
What makes "Muriel" unique after all these years is the way the director presents the journey into the past of his characters, how they see it, and how it affects their present lives and the possibility (or rather impossibility) of love and happiness. Alain Resnains uses quick flashes of memory in the form of almost hypnotizing jump cuts of his genius cinematographer Sacha Vierny (Resnains and Vierny had made 10 films together). Vierny provided beautiful melancholic visual palette of washed out colors that created the atmosphere of unbearable sadness, loss, and hopelessness. Vierny who always underlined his preference for atmosphere over formal perfection, had said, "My satisfaction is that the photography is not remarked on too much for itself". The visual originality and innovation are accompanied by unusual unnerving soundtrack, eerie and haunting that adds to the understanding of guilt and remorse the film characters live with.
"Muriel" is a puzzling and multi-layered film that is easy to admire and meditate on. It is not entertaining or heart-warming and it is hard to identify with its heroes (or anti-heroes) but is always fascinating and rewarding and it may reveal its secrets after multiple viewings.
Movie Review: Muriel, ou la mémoire parallèle
Summary: 4 Stars
Un homme et une femme se retrouvent. Ils furent amants, ils eurent une liaison, ils s'en souviennent, ils l'évoquent ensemble. Mais ce genre de retrouvaille occasionne des troubles : l'homme se présente avec une autre femme, plus jeune, qu'il fait passer pour sa nièce alors qu'elle est sa maîtresse. Quant à la femme (Delphine Seyric), elle a une liaison avec un chef d'entreprise, et elle vit avec un beau-fils qui est resté traumatisé par la guerre d'Algérie, où il a torturé une certaine Muriel.
Dans la ville de Boulogne où ils se retrouvent, il y a un immeuble qui n'arrête pas de glisser, c'est le thème même des sentiments qui se croisent, se recherchent et se repoussent. S'aiment-ils encore? Se sont-ils aimés? C'est le cri du coeur que prononce Hélène devant son ex-compagnon "Mais enfin, nous nous sommes aimés!" comme si le temps effaçait les évidences. En fin de compte, elle constatera la banalité de leur aventure, qui peut arriver à tout le monde, dans un contexte ordinaire, mais qui peut prendre des dimensions incontrôlables si le remord devient insurmontable, comme c'est le cas pour le jeune homme qui accumule les souvenirs de Muriel dans une chambre secrète où la parole enregistrée de la souffrance se heurte aux images presque banales d'une guerre comme il y en a tant partout dans le monde...
Un beau film à méditer qui n'a rien perdu de sa puissance évocatrice.
Movie Review: muriel,an early movie of Alain Resnais
Summary: 4 Stars
It is a kind of movie you have to watch very carefully.The characters are difficult to personalize. Delphine Seyrig trying to come back to a past far away, but not forgotten,a lover, who at the end is only a cheat, a son who returned from Algiers with too many problems, friends who are not related to her real life and a lot of memories which have to be recycled, in order to have a sense. All this stuff is masterly managed by Resnais,although is not easy to follow in the movie. The grade I consider deserves the movie, turns out from a climate present along the movie which is the main asset of the film.Movie Review: Brilliant for a limited audience
Summary: 3 Stars
I was entranced by Last Year at Marienbad when it came out and was a huge fan of the Nouvelle Vague when it washed up on our shores, too. I had missed Muriel and was eager to see it when I came upon it recently.
I could ponder about why it failed to touch me in any way when Marienbad made such an impact. In a strange way my reaction mirrors the theme of the film--how memory changes things. I was young and impressionable, then, the same age as Helene (Delphine Seyrig) was, when she fell in love so many years earlier. On an impulse she has written her ex-lover and invited him to visit her, hoping to recapture the love they had once known, but nothing is the same.
Now she's older, has survived the war, settled in the provinces and has her own struggles with her business, money, and her family. The ex-lover has white hair, has to wear an overcoat to keep warm and, well, things just aren't as magical as they once were, back in Paris.
Likewise for me, the stylistic breakthroughs that were so stunning at the time strike me as sort of quaint and even silly. We think that the young woman accompanying the ex-lover is his niece but then we find out that she's his present lover and later she mentions marriage to Helene's step-son. And then we find out that the ex-lover who seems to be Helene's avid suitor again is really married to the sister of some man who shows up towards the end of the film. These elements are obviously meant to be wonderously unconventional, I guess, and, in the 60's being unconventional was definitely the way to go but to me, now, I'm settled and living in the provinces and no longer impressed by wierdness.
You could compare this to the huge breakthrough in painting when Picasso, for one, shattered the conventional way of looking at things. Women suddenly had two eyes on the same side of their heads. I still love to look at Picasso, but Resnais, not-so-much.
For the true cineaste this must be an important film. For the average viewer of 2007 who is no longer impressed by the novelty of the style this might be something to miss. It depends on what you're looking for. There are interesting points on how memory deceives us, I suppose, and musings on identity, which may have been news at that time. There are important historical references to the war in Algeria and WWII which would have had a significance to the French viewing public at that time. Delphine Seyrig is lovely. The music is appropriately bizarre and suits the mood of the film. Many will find it haunting, others, annoying.
For me, Muriel is a curious museum piece...something for the head, nothing for the heart. I wonder how I'd like Marienbad now? I think I'll just keep the happy memories.
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