Alain Resnais' L'Année dernière à Marienbad / Last Year at Marienbad (1961) won't seem particularly bizarre to anyone even tangentially familiar with Surrealism, Existentialism, Theatre of the Absurd, The Twilight Zone (1959-1965) or David Lynch films.
If you are not in an altered state at the beginning of this flick yet stick with it, you probably will be by the time it's done.
As Joyce Carol Oates posed the question also in the 1960s, where are you going, where have you been? Where are we now? Who are we? Where is here? Were we here before at Marienbad? Who is the man with the Italian accent? What does it mean if some things cast shadows and others don't? Who is Godot and why are we waiting for him? Makes perfect sense that these kinds of questions might be inspired by the War, the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We need to be asking the same kinds of questions in 2011, too.
If nothing else, enjoy the visuals.
3 comments:
That was an awesome song...and you're right, the visuals are..to put it lightly, nice :D I love older films.
Oh, just wanted to let you know, I looked up Heaven's Lathe, already ordering it. You my good sir have great taste.
I enjoyed a more literate movie last night actually. The Black Swan. I'm proud of myself. Not that I can hang with folks like yourself in a discussion of quality movies, of course, but I took baby steps. :)
Thanks for the comments, both!
AD, many thanks. I know the 1971 novel version & the low-budget partially restored 1979/80 movie version. There's a later movie version that I haven't seen; supposedly it changes the story quite a bit. In any case, cool~ Charles -- also, cool ~~ quality is a relative term, no doubt. One person's gold and all that. Good to have some common ground, but also to compare with a lot of variety -- nifty fifty on Black Swan. I haven't seen it yet . . .
Post a Comment