One of the things that I find particularly interesting about this film is the the fact that it lacks any sense of temporal or spatial structure. The scenes between the two main characters happen over and over again in numerous settings and contexts, making it impossible to distinguish if it’s even reality; in fact it seems more like a dream or a representation of the character’s state of mind. One of the lines that reiterates this idea of the character’s psychosis occurs when the man repeats the words, “no means of escape”. It is almost as if he is trapped in his own mind, forced to recall every detail of his encounter with this woman. The film also does a lot with sound that seeks to disorient the viewer and place them in the mental state of the male character. For instance, there are numerous occasions where we hear characters talking but we don’t see them or we see them talking but all we hear is the creepy organ playing in the background. Another important aspect of the film is its unique visual quality. As with the films of Agnès Varda, Resnais’s film is also quite picturesque in its aesthetics. In the beginning as the camera pans through the chateau, the characters are quite still, almost as if they are a part of the scenery or framed in painting. Furthermore, many of the shots are done in deep focus, allowing a more layered picture (as is often done with artistic drawings). Although disorienting, the Last Year at Marienbad is rather stunning visually speaking and therefore should not be overlooked in the grand scheme of French New Wave Cinema.
What I found interesting about this film was the symbolism of statues. When the two main character first meet they discuss the meaning of the statues in the garden, then the guest appear to be frozen in time as statues. The film plays with the idea of time and reality, showing flashbacks of memories in the present repetitively. This is similar to how our minds really work, often think about the past while still acting in the future, reliving different version till you come to the correct one. The frozen guests are tuned out while the character sort’s reality from memory, tuning out the world and living in his head. The hotel plays a significant role, it’s many rooms and doors, become a haunting character in the film. Numbers also seem to play an important role, the game of choosing that they all seem to be confound by and the time and dates, " meeting at 12, 1928 or 1929", and the number of times action replay, all seem to have some meaning
After viewing L'année dernière à Marienbad (1961), I wondered why the film continued scrolling through my mind. It is simply due to the vast questions the film, or Alain Resnais, fails to answer. The mere reason behind this is to keep the film alive. By answering the film’s questions, the book is closed and metaphorically, the film dies. Since there is absolutely no right way to read the film, this opens up multiple interpretations. What I want to discuss is how the film is delivered in a stream of unconsciousness.
Typically in a state of consciousness, a narrator delivers straight from the mind to the form of art, but in this film, where time, space, meaning and reality are all questioned, it almost pulls more than the obvious thought of the narrator and into something or someplace deeper. Even further to a possible area where the narrator (whom I interpreted as X) might not be willing to share, but if it is constantly streaming from the mind to celluloid, we, the spectators, are able to witness the possible memories, desires, and/or fantasies that X renders in his mind.
In one particular scene, X is talking to A outside in the garden. They both give their lines while looking off into the distance:
X: You were waiting for me. A: No, I wasn’t waiting for your or anyone. X: You were waiting for anything… It was as if you were dead… That’s not true… You’re still alive… You’re here. I can see you… (He finally looks at her.) Do you remember? (She doesn’t respond and he turns back away.) That’s not true… probably. You’ve already forgotten it all… It’s not true. It’s not true… You’re about to leave… Your door is still open.
This leads us into a new location, but what we’re led to believe what was being discussed is still occurring. X continues describing the past as we are brought deeper and deeper into his manifested representation of what happened. The way he describes also leads into the idea of what he says is spilling out of his head. She begins recollecting pieces (the painting and the fireplace) of what appears to lead into X’s recreated fantasy. She describes this, but it is just as much a fantasy recreated by X. Later on, X describes in detail what A was doing in her bedroom, but the interesting part is we see her act each description out after each voice-over.
This is specifically shown in the scene where M shoots A, and then we get a cut with M walking down the long hallway. We assume he killed her, but the camera pans right and we have X still talking to A, in which he goes on describing the appearance of her dead body, which we have just witnessed for ourselves:
X: An arm half-bent toward your hair. A hand cast down, the other on your chin, index finger over your mouth… as if to stifle a cry. And now here you are again. No, that isn’t the right ending. I must have you alive.
After seeing what appeared to have been M killing A, we are brought out and into a different setting with all three characters and X continuing the description of what we saw, therefore X is presenting his fantasy directly to A. He even proves it by suddenly wanting her alive.
X even battles his own subconscious when he tries denying yet another possibility of him taking her by force in the bedroom. In the end, X creeps into her room and A holds herself against the bedpost in a frightened movement. The camera artistically pulls out of the room to show how X is fighting the memory and trying to deny it. We follow this shot with a track down a bare hallway with X narrating:
X: No! No! It’s not true. It wasn’t by force. Try to remember.
The camera continues tracking down the hallway and cuts a corner, where we make our way back into A’s bedroom, where she awaits with open arms. The camera repeatedly zooms into her over and over again to possibly suggest the act of ravaging her, but showing her with open arms -- therefore it is not by force. This is his recreated fantasy to tell the story in the way he wants us to see it. We have witnessed a possibly repressed memory recreated to set his mind at ease.
It's 3 AM and I'm not sure if it's too late to post a blog for tomorrow's class but I wanted to respond to and expand upon what was said in regards to the significance and use of the organ and soundtrack throughout the film as well as some other noteworthy insight. The organ music embodies the voice-over and moves it through a passage of the film both architecturally and narratively speaking. The mix levels between these two key elements of the soundtrack heighten tension (when the organ overwhelms the voice) and provide an unreal relief (when the organ dissolves behind the voice). Such sound effects as these, the modern day viewer is overly use to - especially when watching melodrama. Also, the volume of the voice-over narration during the opening sequence (over the credits and across the establishing tracking shots down the multiple corridors) fades up and down, and its repeated fragments appear to be slight variations of a general description of a non-specific space. In this sense, the film is employing the same techniques that us modern viewers have been groomed to be accustomed to: the marriage of sound and image as a cinematic language. The baroque architecture serves as the symbolic image of hysteria, especially emotional, which this film seems to be all about - confused emotions which arise from fractured relationships, repressed memories and problematized desires. I did some research and saw that this film was based on a novel by ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET and that this genre of novels is characterized by puzzles, riddles and other perplexing forms which both drive the narrative and prevent it from being resolved.
As far as statues goes, the line that stood out most in the film was when the man said, "that may as well be you and I" when looking at a statue. The characters in the film surely act like statues as they stare into space and walk aimlessly around the large baroque home. The man even likes to tell stories about statues. My favorite shot in the film is that of the long shot of the garden because of how geometrically pleasing it is.
The film first off was not the most exciting or interesting film I have seen. But in terms of dealing with the French new wave, I can see how this is a useful film. I would first like to point out the notion of this almost silent film in dialogue, but full of vitalizing music. The so few spoken words help add to the characters and how the audience portrays them. With the man two stars, the melatonin feelings and seriousness turns the audience into the same mode right away by this use. It represents a new style of filming that Hollywood and other film prodigies had not seen before. Having characters completely stop motion, to almost make it seem like a photograph, and then the chosen characters begin to motion or speak right away as if seamless. This was the most impact full feature of the film to me, cause it played with my mind and gave me the sort of feeling the director was going for. I was not a big fan of the movie but agree that it is a good representation of a new French wave style.
One of the things that I find particularly interesting about this film is the the fact that it lacks any sense of temporal or spatial structure. The scenes between the two main characters happen over and over again in numerous settings and contexts, making it impossible to distinguish if it’s even reality; in fact it seems more like a dream or a representation of the character’s state of mind. One of the lines that reiterates this idea of the character’s psychosis occurs when the man repeats the words, “no means of escape”. It is almost as if he is trapped in his own mind, forced to recall every detail of his encounter with this woman. The film also does a lot with sound that seeks to disorient the viewer and place them in the mental state of the male character. For instance, there are numerous occasions where we hear characters talking but we don’t see them or we see them talking but all we hear is the creepy organ playing in the background.
ReplyDeleteAnother important aspect of the film is its unique visual quality. As with the films of Agnès Varda, Resnais’s film is also quite picturesque in its aesthetics. In the beginning as the camera pans through the chateau, the characters are quite still, almost as if they are a part of the scenery or framed in painting. Furthermore, many of the shots are done in deep focus, allowing a more layered picture (as is often done with artistic drawings).
Although disorienting, the Last Year at Marienbad is rather stunning visually speaking and therefore should not be overlooked in the grand scheme of French New Wave Cinema.
What I found interesting about this film was the symbolism of statues. When the two main character first meet they discuss the meaning of the statues in the garden, then the guest appear to be frozen in time as statues. The film plays with the idea of time and reality, showing flashbacks of memories in the present repetitively. This is similar to how our minds really work, often think about the past while still acting in the future, reliving different version till you come to the correct one. The frozen guests are tuned out while the character sort’s reality from memory, tuning out the world and living in his head. The hotel plays a significant role, it’s many rooms and doors, become a haunting character in the film. Numbers also seem to play an important role, the game of choosing that they all seem to be confound by and the time and dates, " meeting at 12, 1928 or 1929", and the number of times action replay, all seem to have some meaning
ReplyDeleteAfter viewing L'année dernière à Marienbad (1961), I wondered why the film continued scrolling through my mind. It is simply due to the vast questions the film, or Alain Resnais, fails to answer. The mere reason behind this is to keep the film alive. By answering the film’s questions, the book is closed and metaphorically, the film dies. Since there is absolutely no right way to read the film, this opens up multiple interpretations. What I want to discuss is how the film is delivered in a stream of unconsciousness.
ReplyDeleteTypically in a state of consciousness, a narrator delivers straight from the mind to the form of art, but in this film, where time, space, meaning and reality are all questioned, it almost pulls more than the obvious thought of the narrator and into something or someplace deeper. Even further to a possible area where the narrator (whom I interpreted as X) might not be willing to share, but if it is constantly streaming from the mind to celluloid, we, the spectators, are able to witness the possible memories, desires, and/or fantasies that X renders in his mind.
In one particular scene, X is talking to A outside in the garden. They both give their lines while looking off into the distance:
X: You were waiting for me.
A: No, I wasn’t waiting for your or anyone.
X: You were waiting for anything… It was as if you were dead… That’s not true… You’re still alive… You’re here. I can see you… (He finally looks at her.) Do you remember? (She doesn’t respond and he turns back away.) That’s not true… probably. You’ve already forgotten it all… It’s not true. It’s not true… You’re about to leave… Your door is still open.
This leads us into a new location, but what we’re led to believe what was being discussed is still occurring. X continues describing the past as we are brought deeper and deeper into his manifested representation of what happened. The way he describes also leads into the idea of what he says is spilling out of his head. She begins recollecting pieces (the painting and the fireplace) of what appears to lead into X’s recreated fantasy. She describes this, but it is just as much a fantasy recreated by X. Later on, X describes in detail what A was doing in her bedroom, but the interesting part is we see her act each description out after each voice-over.
This is specifically shown in the scene where M shoots A, and then we get a cut with M walking down the long hallway. We assume he killed her, but the camera pans right and we have X still talking to A, in which he goes on describing the appearance of her dead body, which we have just witnessed for ourselves:
X: An arm half-bent toward your hair. A hand cast down, the other on your chin, index finger over your mouth… as if to stifle a cry. And now here you are again. No, that isn’t the right ending. I must have you alive.
After seeing what appeared to have been M killing A, we are brought out and into a different setting with all three characters and X continuing the description of what we saw, therefore X is presenting his fantasy directly to A. He even proves it by suddenly wanting her alive.
X even battles his own subconscious when he tries denying yet another possibility of him taking her by force in the bedroom. In the end, X creeps into her room and A holds herself against the bedpost in a frightened movement. The camera artistically pulls out of the room to show how X is fighting the memory and trying to deny it. We follow this shot with a track down a bare hallway with X narrating:
X: No! No! It’s not true. It wasn’t by force. Try to remember.
The camera continues tracking down the hallway and cuts a corner, where we make our way back into A’s bedroom, where she awaits with open arms. The camera repeatedly zooms into her over and over again to possibly suggest the act of ravaging her, but showing her with open arms -- therefore it is not by force. This is his recreated fantasy to tell the story in the way he wants us to see it. We have witnessed a possibly repressed memory recreated to set his mind at ease.
It's 3 AM and I'm not sure if it's too late to post a blog for tomorrow's class but I wanted to respond to and expand upon what was said in regards to the significance and use of the organ and soundtrack throughout the film as well as some other noteworthy insight. The organ music embodies the voice-over and moves it through a passage of the film both architecturally and narratively speaking. The mix levels between these two key elements of the soundtrack heighten tension (when the organ overwhelms the voice) and provide an unreal relief (when the organ dissolves behind the voice). Such sound effects as these, the modern day viewer is overly use to - especially when watching melodrama. Also, the volume of the voice-over narration during the opening sequence (over the credits and across the establishing tracking shots down the multiple corridors) fades up and down, and its repeated fragments appear to be slight variations of a general description of a non-specific space.
ReplyDeleteIn this sense, the film is employing the same techniques that us modern viewers have been groomed to be accustomed to: the marriage of sound and image as a cinematic language. The baroque architecture serves as the symbolic image of hysteria, especially emotional, which this film seems to be all about - confused emotions which arise from fractured relationships, repressed memories and problematized desires. I did some research and saw that this film was based on a novel by ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET and that this genre of novels is characterized by puzzles, riddles and other perplexing forms which both drive the narrative and prevent it from being resolved.
As far as statues goes, the line that stood out most in the film was when the man said, "that may as well be you and I" when looking at a statue. The characters in the film surely act like statues as they stare into space and walk aimlessly around the large baroque home. The man even likes to tell stories about statues. My favorite shot in the film is that of the long shot of the garden because of how geometrically pleasing it is.
The film first off was not the most exciting or interesting film I have seen. But in terms of dealing with the French new wave, I can see how this is a useful film. I would first like to point out the notion of this almost silent film in dialogue, but full of vitalizing music. The so few spoken words help add to the characters and how the audience portrays them. With the man two stars, the melatonin feelings and seriousness turns the audience into the same mode right away by this use. It represents a new style of filming that Hollywood and other film prodigies had not seen before. Having characters completely stop motion, to almost make it seem like a photograph, and then the chosen characters begin to motion or speak right away as if seamless. This was the most impact full feature of the film to me, cause it played with my mind and gave me the sort of feeling the director was going for. I was not a big fan of the movie but agree that it is a good representation of a new French wave style.
ReplyDelete