Review #2: Last Year at Marienbad

Alain Resnais is a very weird man... there, I've said it, and now we can get on with the review.

The director of L'Année dernière à Marienbad challenges his audience in a way unthinkable in contemporary mass-market cinema... and by all descriptions he expected people to pay to see his film. Nowadays, a similarly adventurous movie would be funded by a foundation and presented at a museum or gallery for the admiring few... at best it would be given an "arthouse" label and consigned to the obscurity that that suggests.

Resnais has a strong connection to literature, especially the nouveau roman movement... [he was also married to Florence Malraux, daughter of André Malraux]. The screenplay for his 1959 film Hiroshima, mon amour was written by Marguerite Duras; for this film Resnais turned to the master of enigmatic non-linear fiction, Alain Robbe-Grillet.

For some, watching Last Year at Marienbad could be trying; the use of off-putting camera angles in the opening sequence – with a minor-key repetitive score, and a vocal track that drifts into and out of comprehensibility – gives either a sense of anticipation because it is obvious that one is about to witness something excitingly different, or a sense of foreboding because it is obvious that one is about to be subjected to something weird. Both are legitimate responses, but I will challenge those who would put themselves in the second camp upon seeing this movie to suggest that it does not in some significant way haunt them... if anything, Last Year at Marienbad, gives one something to talk about and inspires a willingness to do just that.

And I've come this far without really saying anything about this film, so I must rectify this problem. There are three main characters: X, A, and M. X [a man] is trying to convince A [a woman] that they have met in the past. A seems unwilling or unable to accept this, but seems unwilling, also, to put X off completely. M may or may not be A's husband, but he is a gambler, for sure, and X and he play a number of variations of the same game of chance, with the same result. As the show goes on, one becomes both confused and convinced: confused because it isn't always apparent whether one is in the past, the present, or in a fiction of one of the character's making at any given time; and convinced that something has gone on between X and A [an affair? a kiss?] and that they do have affection for one another. All three characters have at least two sides presented: M seems both objectionable and sympathetic; X seems both passionately interested and a little creepily obsessed; A seems both vitally engaged and completely uninterested [while being played by the quite scrumptious Delphine Seyrig, dressed to the nines in Coco Chanel creations (uncredited)].

What is apparent is that this film is made by a consummately gifted filmmaker; the cinematography is stunning [sharp focus black and white], the mise en scène is brilliantly constructed, and the formalistic blocking of movement within the frame gives a sense of unreality to a very conventional cinematic plot: boy met girl, lost her [perhaps in a card game?], sees her again and tries to get her back, seems to fail, seems to succeed, all with the brooding presence of her other suitor casting a shadow over the whole [non] affair.

The film ends [yes it does, for those who might find it slightly torturous... it is only a bit over 90 minutes long] and one is left wondering what really happened... did something happen? Of course, one knows that something did happen, one watched this film and it will stick in memory for a long time. Watch it. Let me know what you think... I liked it.