L'année dernière à Marienbad

Plot synopsis:
Since man first became aware of time with the passing of the seasons, the nature of time has been challenging philosophers and scientists alike. Starting with the "flux doctrine" of "Heraclitus," according to which everything is constantly altering ("You cannot step twice in the same river"), to Henry Bergson, who was one of the first philosophers to incorporate cinema into a philosophical discourse, philosophers have wrestled with the concepts of time and memory. In literature, Marcel Proust of course comes to mind with his huge novel "Remembrance of Things Past," and on the scientific side, Albert Einstein with his "Theory of General Relativity." Einstein posited that time is simply another dimension, which with space forms a four-dimensional space-time continuum (that was until recently, when seven more dimensions were added with the M-theory, the "theory of everything").Stephen Hawking distinguishes three different "arrows of time": thermodynamic, cosmological, and psychological ("A Brief History of Time," 1988). Although all of these three time arrows enter in our daily lives to a greater or lesser extent, we are here only concerned with the psychological arrow of time. Bergson, whom Proust admired, made a distinction between the concept ("clock time") and the experience of time ("real time"), arguing that "real time" is experienced as "duration" and apprehended by "intuition." He further stated that time is in constant flux, with moments of the past and the present having equal reality.This leads us to Alain Resnais' film, "L'année dernière à Marienbad" ("Last Year at Marienbad," 1961), which appeared on the French screens in 1961. To say that this film shocked the film audiences is an understatement. Nobody had seen anything like it, although Resnais' "Hiroshima mon amour" should have prepared us by the way it explores his favorite themes: the anguish of oblivion and the fixity of time. In Resnais' film traditional realism is no longer, replaced by a deeper realism, that of the mind.For "L'année dernière à Marienbad," Resnais collaborated with Alain Robbe-Grillet on the scenario. Robbe-Grillet should also be credited as co-director, as he wrote a detailed shooting script that Resnais followed faithfully, with a few exceptions. As such, some words are also in order regarding Robbe-Grillet.Alain Robbe-Grillet is a French author and literary critic. In the mid-1950s until the early 1960s, he was the theorist and leading proponent of a new movement in French literature known as "le nouveau roman" (the new novel). This new novel is characterized by stark descriptions which often shun allegory and metaphor in favor of precise physical details, an enhanced sense of ambiguity with respect to points of view, and an extreme disjunction of time and space. The new novel lacks the conventional elements of the traditional modes of literary realism, such as dramatic plotting, psychological analysis, and its adhesion to the unities of time and place, which creates an illusion of order, in contrast to modern life's discontinuities and randomness. Robbe-Grillet's novels are characterized by the destruction of the plot in favor of a clever construction where the protagonists no longer have any psychological dimensions, nor time and space any objective reality. They are composed largely of recurring images, impersonally depicted physical objects, and the random events of everyday life. Robbe-Grillet has written eighteen novels of various kinds and directed ten films. He was made a member of the prestigious "Académie Française," in 2004. The most famous dramatization of his literary theories came to life in the present Resnais' film.The film is about the dream of a man in love with an inaccessible woman. But the dream is also a nightmare. He comes to take her away, but she does not, or does not want to, remember him. When he seems to have finally reached her, she has moved into another time, into another memory. As he renews his efforts to convince her, new nightmares arise. He is not even sure of loving her, or even if it was she who was or the object of his love. The film ends with his taking her in the nightuntil the next dream."Marienbad" is a love story, although not a "story" in the conventional narrative sense, since the fragmented images cannot be scanned chronologically. The "story" is not told rather it is described using a juxtaposition of physical images, through memories and associations, projected through a space-time continuum, which destroys both linear chronology and fixity. Resnais built a captivating puzzle-like film, a labyrinth, which at time resembles the optical illusions of Escher or the surreal world of Magritte.Any attempt to provide a satisfying chronology for the film would contradict the assumptions upon which it was built, as well as the manner in which it is presented. However, we can describe it. The setting is a luxurious hotel, lush with furnishings, paintings, moldings, and sculptures. There are endless formal gardens surrounding the hotel. The principal characters go only by letters, A (Delphine Seyrig), X (Giorgio Albertazzi), and M (Sasha Pitoeff). X attempts to convince A that they have met last year in this hotel (or maybe it was in a different one), that they loved each other, emotionally and physically, and that she had agreed to elope with him, away from M, her husband (or lover). At the last moment, she had refused (for whatever reason) and asked for a one year postponement. Now, the year has passed and X has come to their agreed rendezvous to take her away. A claims she does not recognize X, and cannot remember any agreement between them. At first, X is surprised, and he recounts conversations the two of them had, supporting details, relating scenes convincingly. A persists in not remembering, even though X produces a photograph of her as a proof of his claim.However, X could be mistaken about his last year's affair. If X is not mistaken, could his affair have been with another woman? A could have also had an affair with another man, "Frank," whose name recurs during the film in several of the other hotel guests' conversations. As the film progresses, X is insistent, as if the strength of his conviction in recounting what he believes are actually the events themselves. At this point, facts and arguments are so mixed up that nothing is any longer verifiable. And to top it all off, at the end of the film, the lovers (A and X) run away together into the night, but this flight is recounted to us by X, in the past tense. The result is that the story can be re-started from the beginning: the whole thing took place last year, and it can be repeated ad infinitum.The woman, A, moves about the hotel in a series of stylized poses. She spends her time reading, watching a play, walking about the gardens, and having conversations with X. M hovers throughout the film, drifting from room to room, engaged in a multitude of pursuits. In particular, he gambles and plays a variation of the game of "Nim" with the other guests, which he claims he always wins.Surrounding these three main characters are the other personages of the film: the hotel itself, the gardens, and the other guests. The guests take walks along statuaries, hedge-mazes, fountains, and long gravel paths. Everyone appears in evening clothes to attend a dinner, a concert, or a play presented at the hotel's theater, a play that resembles the events that are unfolding in the very film we are watching. Conversations are overheard. Words float in the air as if trapped inside the hotel, in search of a listener. Time itself moves forward or backward, depending on the subject of conversations, or the mood of the people.

Tags: avant garde, mystery, cult, alternate reality, flashback, psychedelic, romantic

Review: