La Jetée

 

Marker (left) with Alain Resnais

Writer/director Chris Marker

LA JETÉE         A                                                                                                                          aka: Death on the Pier                                                                                                           France  (28 mi)  1962  d: Chris Marker

Under the orders of Jean-Luc, I’ve said for a long time that films should be seen first in theaters, and that television and video are only there to refresh your memory. Now that I no longer have any time at all to go to the cinema, I’ve started seeing films by lowering my eyes [on a television or computer screen], with an ever increasing sense of sinfulness.                —Chris Marker Film Comment interview, 2003

This post-apocalyptic science fiction drama was released in 1962, immersed in the doomsday, nuclear disaster mindset of the era, when there was an alarmist aspect of the culture in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, when Cold War tensions and a threat of nuclear war convinced government leaders in the United States that millions of lives could be saved by the construction of bomb shelters (Nuclear Fallout Shelters Were Never Going to Work), with Life magazine, at the behest of President Kennedy, spurring a nationwide trend to build backyard bomb shelters, (LIFE Magazine “How You Can Survive Fallout”).  Among the most popular films of the day was Stanley Kramer’s bleak depiction of the aftermath of a nuclear war in ON THE BEACH (1959), listed among the Top-Grossing Movies of 1959, while Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon in 1959 was one of the first apocalyptic novels of the nuclear age, and Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s Fail-Safe, depicting a nightmarish military nuclear fiasco, became a bestselling American novel in 1962, initially released during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  And how could we forget Stanley Kubrick’s hilariously subversive Cold War satire, DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964)?  Yet one of the most radical films of the era is simply a compilation of still photographs beautifully edited together in a 28-minute montage that film critic Pauline Kael described as “very possibly the greatest science-fiction movie yet made.”  While this is his only foray into fictional narrative filmmaking, Marker is the undisputed master of the film essay, as evidenced by films like Le Joli Mai (1963), The Grin Without a Cat (Le Fond de L’Air Est Rouge) (1977), and Sans Soleil (1982), where his experimental style creates layers of dramatic intrigue that viewers are required to sift through in order to make sense of this disturbing WWIII scenario where the world is wiped out from nuclear annihilation, yet it ponders whether the past and future can possibly rescue the present. Much of this unravels through the power of suggestion, where a disembodied voice becomes a recurring narrative device in Marker films, reminding us of the importance of memories, existing in two versions, one in French and the other in English (Jean Négroni in French, James Kirk in English), walking us through a series of baffling events that continuously challenge the viewer.  Even after more than half a century, viewers are still unsure of just what they’ve seen, as there’s an enigmatic quality to this film that is part of its enduring legacy, where so much is compressed into a brief window of time.  By the early 60’s, Marker had already established himself as one of the major artistic figures in France, having fought in the Resistance during the war, he published his only novel, Le Coeur Net (The Forthright Spirit), in 1949, which is about aviation, followed in 1952 by an illustrated essay on French writer Jean Giraudoux, Giraudoux Par Lui-Même.  He worked as an assistant director for Alain Resnais on his devastating Holocaust documentary NIGHT AND FOG (1955), and was also a prolific film critic, writing for the left-wing Catholic journal Esprit (magazine) and Cahiers du Cinéma.  He was a tireless traveler, editing the innovative guidebook series Petite Planète for Éditions de Seuil, (Isabel Stevens on Chris Marker's "Petite Planète"), contributing his own photographs, playfully exploring the people and terrain of Siberia four years after the death of Stalin in LETTER FROM SIBERIA (1957), while in 1959, he published Coréennes, a photographic study of Korea.  Making upwards of 70 films, many of them collaborations, Marker directed 20 or so feature films, becoming known as a filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor, and even a videographer and digital multimedia artist who has been challenging audiences for years with his complex ruminations on time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet.  Many of his earliest films are personal travelogues, making trips to China, North Korea, Israel, the Soviet Union, and Cuba, with Marker assuming the role of a foreign correspondent in the intimate documentary ¡CUBA SÍ! (1961), chronicling the island’s transition from the dictatorship of Batista to the Cuban Revolution under Fidel Castro, including several interviews with him, ending with the Bay of Bigs incident, but the film was banned for two years for remaining largely sympathetic to Castro and the making of a revolution.  But he became known internationally for making this film, made simultaneously with Le Joli Mai (1963), composed entirely of photographs by cinematographer Jean Chiabaud except for one startling 5-second shot of a mysterious woman lazily opening her eyes from a slumber as she blinks at the viewers.  Our perception of a photograph is that it captures the present moment, yet it instantly becomes the past, as a photograph will always remain a memory. 

Marker is part of the Left Bank Group spearheaded by Alain Resnais, who were more experimental and politically conscious than the French New Wave, fiercely defying convention, viewing cinema more as an art form, inhabiting the same mysterious realm as the nearly incomprehensible Alain Resnais puzzle film Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année Dernière à Marienbad) (1961), where this is among Marker’s more stylish and innovative films, an existentialist tale of doomed existence, and a parable of our modern fate, exuding a penetrating intelligence, and may represent cinema’s closest approach to poetry.  Using a fragmented structure to show how brief the most impactful moments in our life can be, having an unforgettable gravity, as those memories shape our lives and make us who we are, yet this is only apparent when the film takes an astonishing turn into time travel, taking us into the realm of science fiction to examine what it is that truly makes us human.  The opening of the film is strange enough, full of mysterious implications, yet what’s immediately clear is that something very precise and concrete has happened, as the sounds of a jet engine quickly become swallowed up by the voices of the Saint Alexander Nevsky Cathedral choir singing a Liturgy of the Good Saturday announcing the start of a nuclear war, LA JETÉE (1962) Dir. Chris Marker - YouTube (2:20), with the rest of the film delving into the hidden recesses of the imagination to explore the profound ramifications, The First Minute | La Jetée (1962) YouTube (1:21). Reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut’s seminal time traveling novel Slaughterhouse-Five, where the horrors of war leave behind a catastrophic impact on the survivors, continually revisiting the trauma, where only science fiction allows him to explain what he witnessed, or THE LATHE OF HEAVEN (1980), a remarkable made-for-television adaptation of the Ursula K. Le Guin apocalyptic sci-fi novel, but instead of time traveling, the central protagonist has the power to alter the entire world through dreams.  While the premise is similar in each of these films, using the fantastic to better understand the ordinary, it is achieved in radically different ways, becoming a story of trauma, memory, longing, and loss in a quiet and understated format.  Marker doesn’t even have names for his characters, instead they are who they appear to be, a man, a woman, a prisoner, a doctor, who seem to exist only in the imagination, where what’s important are the ideas they generate, as that’s what sticks with us.  In the aftermath of a nuclear war that has left the world in utter annihilation, a group of mysterious scientists (with the faint sound of untranslated German) test their experimental time travel program, which becomes a key instrument in the fate of the human race, in hopes that traveling to both the past and the future may find the resources needed to save the dismal present.  Experimenting on prisoners, much like the Nazi’s did in WWII, their initial tests are all unsuccessful, insinuating some may have died in the process, or gone mad, leading to a prisoner (Davos Hanich), chosen for his strong attachment to a childhood memory, the image of a man shot dead on the observation pier at Paris-Orly airport, yet what captivated him was the shocked look on a woman’s face (Hélène Châtelain, only appearing in two short films), where he inevitably returns back to that moment searching for her, replaying it over and over in his head.  His journey is structured by the memory of the woman’s face, as he is driven by his desire to reunite with the beauty of that face, the image that preceded the nuclear blast.  A narrator dryly informs us, “Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments.  It is only later that they claim remembrance, when they show their scars.”  Other than retreating into tunnels underneath the Palais de Chaillot, resembling Fritz Lang’s underground world in METROPOLIS (1927), there is no explanation for how any of them have survived for so many years, though clearly there are one set of victorious oppressors and one of oppressed prisoners, with a stream of images of destroyed ruins left behind offering viewers a glimpse of a destroyed world, left trapped underneath the ground by a contaminating radioactivity, necessitating a need to seek out unimaginable solutions that don’t exist today, with suggestions that this is their only hope.  While the film suggests he actually time travels, that is the nature of storytelling leaving that impression, as the prisoner never seems to leave his state of captivity, but may be encouraged to think so, where it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s imagined, but this entire film may be a drug-induced dream happening inside his head.  

Described as a photo-novel, in effect this is a blend of photography and cinema into a unique artform that is unlike any other film in the history of cinema, especially considering the depths of the experience, drawing upon the subconscious imagination and turning impossibilities into an existing reality.  Marker completed the film while the Cuban Missile Crisis was unfolding in real time, where the imagined dystopian future mirrors the global fears of the Cold War, as the film’s bleak tones and dark pessimism must be contextualized as part of a larger story of post-War Europe, which was left helpless as the United States and the Soviet Union pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.  What’s also interesting is that the time travel journeys are not voluntary, but are forced, with subjects lying in a hammock with bandages over their eyes, with wires connected to a monitoring device, accompanied by the sound of his heartbeat, which is indistinguishable from the sound of marching feet, where one of the nefarious masterminds standing over him is Jacques Ledoux, curator of the Royal Film Archive of Belgium, using stimulants of some kind, perhaps a combination of drugs and hypnosis, and the prisoner is not sent into his own memory, but his memories are utilized as he’s first sent first into the past, and then the future, which opens up his eyes into what might be possible.  One of the first signs that the experiment is working is his recognition of a pastoral landscape, and gardens, memories of peacetime, offering a moment of serenity amidst the draining psychological stress of the experience.  This initial success leads to more, yet a driving interest may be his obsession to find this enigmatic “ghost woman,” who has often been compared to Madeleine in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), as Marker was a fervent devotee of that picture.  It’s also important to realize that what we see onscreen is not reality, but an artificial reconstruction of an alternate reality, where a common element is still shots of immovable objects, yet the rhythmic editing technique of shifting stills offers the suggestion of motion, as viewers are watching a “motion picture” even if the objects do not move.  From the very start, the prisoner is not sure if the object of his desire even exists, or if she is a product of his imagination.  Through subsequent sessions, they meet more frequently, spending a day walking through a park, showing close-ups of the woman’s face at rest, feeling the sun on her face, yet he comes and goes, before mysteriously vanishing, only to return again, as she waits for him, becoming attached, like lost lovers at the end of a dying world, always surrounded by static objects, even visiting a surreal museum of stuffed animals, accompanied by otherworldly music, La Jetée - A Museum Filled with Ageless Animals - YouTube (3:34).  The images are initially silent, but soon we begin to hear the sound of birds, which only grow louder, leading to a bedroom scene, where he watches the woman sleep peacefully before she awakes to find him at her side, and blinks, as the movement of the camera becomes the only real moment in the protagonist’s life.  Then suddenly he is pulled back to the underground camp, a prisoner directed by people whose motives he can only guess about, eventually realizing that he’s been duped, used as a guinea pig for their own purposes before likely being eliminated, stuck in a state of paralysis where he has no freedom of movement.  As we might suspect, that one moment changes things, wondering whether her moving may be a dream, but it’s a dream associated with the freedom of escaping from the stillness, wondering if they could escape together into a world that could move, where the possibility of love might exist.  This suggests a longing for a time he never thought he could revisit, one where he never actually belongs, associated with a longing for a women he could never really know, yet the mere possibility is an emotional jolt that is tremendously affecting to watch.  What follows is a reverie of a different order, as he dreams of escape, but can he really escape the prison confinement, where every act is determined, any more than he can escape from his own consciousness, which has its own mortal limits.  Memory forever connects us to the past, providing a sense of stability, yet loss is a central component to the film, providing a traumatic reference, as man is ultimately unable to extricate himself from his own historical circumstances.  While this may be an essay on politics and transcendence, it also questions whether love can exist during times of war, where one attempts to reclaim their own sanity in the face of controlling and destructive forces.  Marker challenges our sense of free will by telling a story where none of the characters possess it, where in this film the only freedom that really exists is the one within.  

La Jetée (La Jetee 1962)FULL FILM - YouTube  Criterion French version with English subtitles (28:06)

A Ghost Story

A GHOST STORY                B                    

USA  (92 mi)  2017  d:  David Lowery          Official site

It’s sad how sad sadness is

A metaphysical experience, one might say, which offers at least one version of an afterlife that is compatible with the typical low-budget operations of indie films, where a ghost seen throughout the film is literally played by a guy under a white sheet with cut-out eyes.  While this may seem laughable and good for comedy, this is instead an outright drama exploring the various levels of grief, suggesting the pain diminishes but never really goes away, instead lingering out of sight, like a ghost, but still present, lurking just under the surface, continuing to be a reference point and a haunting reminder of the past.  Not nearly as novel or inventive as Larry Abrahamson’s 2014 Top Ten List #10 Frank or Tim Burton’s BEETLEJUICE (1988), films featuring a guy under a mask and a wacky spirit inhabiting a house, as what both of those have is superb writing, creating a deliriously enjoyable experience.  This, on the other hand, is a rather drab affair, largely wordless, relying upon the power of mood, atmosphere, and imagery alone to advance a story, much like the most recent non-narrative Terrence Malick films, even sharing a common actress, Rooney Mara, though without such an impressive world-renowned cinematographer.  Actually this is much more coherent than anything Malick has done recently, spending far fewer dollars, yet producing something that is provocative in its own right.  Ultimately this is a simplistic story of a man and a woman, played by Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara respectively, who are pondering what to do in the next phase of their life, as she wants to move, while he’s comfortable in their modest home in rural Texas and doesn’t want to leave it, where it appears they may have separate visions of how to spend their future.  Yet all evidence suggests they are close and intimate, bonded by a deep love and affection for each other, just unsure about what comes next.  One night they are awakened by a loud thud on the piano, yet they see no signs of an intruder, allowing it to remain a mystery, eventually returning back to bed.  Not long afterwards, on the next fateful day, the man is killed in a car accident just around the corner from his home, leaving the woman overwhelmed by agony and grief, where in perhaps the scene of the film, in one unedited shot, a private moment where the audience is forced to passively witness someone in the depths of mourning, she is seen in real time eating an entire pie (vegan chocolate) that a kindly neighbor left for her, where she is clearly lost and distraught, with tears streaming down her face, yet she continues to munch away, distracted and undeterred, until she makes a mad dash for the toilet, unintentionally making herself sick from the experience. 

Identifying the body at the hospital, the viewer also makes an identification of the remains along with the woman, as the shot is held long after everyone has left the room, with the body eventually rising under the sheet.  As we greet his new ghostly existence, the man draped in a sheet walks down the hospital corridor, out the door, finding his way back to his home where he remains for most of the film, as what we see is then entirely viewed through his perspective.  An existential ghost story, aimlessly wandering through time, much like the immortality of a vampire, the ghost is caught in another dimension, unable to affect the world he continues to see, where weeks and months of living are compressed into seconds as he inhabits the same space, but remains invisible, with no power to influence the world he left behind.  Despite the cheesy production values, the ghost remains the film’s central character, seen in the background when the woman returns with a new boyfriend, where the audience clearly identifies with his helplessness, as there’s little he can do about it.  Eventually she moves out, as she had originally planned, leaving him alone in an empty house, remaining a lonely and tortured soul.  When a new Mexican family moves in, with a mother and several small children, they speak exclusively Spanish, which is not subtitled, so it remains a foreign language to many in the audience and even to the ghost, unable to comprehend what they are saying as they joyously celebrate Christmas, and each passing day thereafter, mostly unable to relate to their experience, growing more aloof, perhaps even bored.  But he’s in for a surprise himself when the little boy can apparently see him, the only one on his family who can, sensing not only his presence, but a palpable fear at seeing such a ghostly figure at a young and impressionable age.  Perhaps angered by his remove, wanting to do something of consequence, he starts throwing dishes, which is viewed as a paranormal experience, smashing glasses and plates, and making the lights flicker, which has the effect of scaring the entire family, who quickly move away.  The intensity of his vanishing life with the women he loves forever comes back in flashbacks, reliving the experience all over again, as we see him hand the headphones to her, playing a gorgeously sublime song, heard in snippets over the trailer, A Ghost Story, Trailer (2:14).  The song is “I Get Overwhelmed” by Dark Rooms, sung by Daniel Hart, their writer and lead singer, who also composes the musical soundtrack for the film, yet the entire song can be heard in an interesting live appearance in Dallas - Fort Worth here,  Dark Rooms - I Get Overwhelmed | Sofar Dallas - Fort Worth - YouTube (6:01).  This music measurably changes the appreciation for the film, emotionally elevating the viewer experience, adding layers of profound depth and sorrow that wouldn’t otherwise be there, with a few brief comments about the song written by the director, Dark Rooms - A Ghost Story OST liner notes from David Lowery ....

Ultimately a story about life, death, love, and regret, where the past and present are all interlinked and interconnected through time, with memories and emotions that remain part of the grand scheme of human existence.  Do we exist even after we’re gone?  For how long?  These kinds of philosophical questions remain at the heart of the Alain Resnais masterwork, Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année Dernière à Marienbad) (1961), made more than half a century ago.  In this film as well, there’s an abrupt shift to a house filled with party revelers, where Will Oldham, the central figure in Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy (2006), resurfaces with a mind-blowing dissertation on our fleeting existence, explaining where we all land in the grand cosmic plan, “We build our legacy piece by piece and maybe the whole world will remember you or maybe just a couple of people, but you do what you can to make sure you’re still around after you’re gone,” suggesting no matter how hard we try to leave a lasting impression, it will all come to naught as the universe will eventually collapse upon itself.  This is the closest thing to a theme offered by the director, as it’s clearly the most extended dialogue, standing apart from the rest of the film which is more of a silently curious observation.  It’s a bit surprising that the ghost leaves the home, like a time traveler wandering through different time dimensions, becoming a ghost of Christmas future and past, finding himself standing in the midst of a modern metropolis, built on the land where his house used to be, or going back in time and re-appearing on the prairie during the settling of the American West, where the frontier (where his home would be built) is a vast expanse, filled with brutal turning points, as history is fast-forwarded, eventually finding himself back inside his home again, with a rush of memories returning, replaying the man and the woman back at the beginning, when he was alive, which he watches intently.  This time we can understand the loud piano noise in the middle of the night, as it was caused by the ghost, a warning sign, perhaps, as he was emotionally distraught by their inconsequential relationship disagreements and clearly unsettled by what was about to happen.  The film places our lives, and the precious moments we share, in context, as we inevitably waste so much time and energy quibbling over things that in the grand scheme of things don’t really matter.  The film recalls the recent Olivier Assayas ghost story, Personal Shopper (2016), which explores many of the same things, while also paying tribute to the brilliant supernatural dream sequences in Carlos Reygadas’s 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #2 Post Tenebras Lux.  Like those, this film tends to divide audiences, some immensely moved by the ultimate tragedy of it all, while others find it a weak substitute for real drama.  Following twelve attempts to get a film to play at Sundance, this is finally the director’s breakthrough film, with editing assistance from Shane Carruth, the writer/director and driving force behind PRIMER (2004), though perhaps casting Sundance founder Robert Redford in his previous film, the Disney distributed PETE’S DRAGON (2016), might have swung the deal.  Nonetheless, despite a glacier pace throughout, designed to prolong the parameters of time, this film does explore pertinent issues, like what happens when the people you love move on, perhaps even forget you, and you can’t interfere, leaving you alone and out of the picture, “trapped in a box for eternity,” as the director indicates, explaining his reasons for using the boxed 1:33 aspect ratio, intentionally creating a congestion of claustrophobic space, where ultimately the enveloping sadness of the film is realizing that the futility of the ghost’s efforts are literally inconsolable, especially when you can’t compassionately reach out and touch the ones you love any more, which only fills the emptiness of time with unending misery and gloom.