kennethangerr Review of La Jetée

La Jetée (1962)

The Juxtaposition Analysis of La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad

[9/10 · 8 March 2019]

While for L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, it "pushed modernist ambiguity to new extremes" (Thompson and Bordwell 450), that is, it is more like a modern theater of absurd instead of a science fiction; an endless, even meaningless circulation instead of the unveiling of the truth and purpose. There's always the monotonous, apathetic voiceover which describes the luxury but highly artificial and emotionless hotel and also the scene from the nameless drama which the guests in the hotel are watching. What's the relationship between our lives and fictional works? Is it that our real lives are like the absurd fictional works? What's the purpose of it? These have already suggested that L'Année Dernière à Marienbad is a metafiction which requires multiple interpretations from the audience's own thinkings and the concern on time, memory, fantasy and the nature of the modern world. Nothing can be sure in L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, none of the time, place or characters. Whenever some "truths" are revealed, it adds to ambiguity, uncertainty and even disguise: When the man tells her that the statues of one man and woman in the garden depicts the situation that the man has seen some danger and asks the woman not to move, while the woman thinks that it's the woman who has seen something marvelous and is pointing it out to the man. These kind of perceptions of ambivalence appear a lot in the movie, which is one of the central motifs of the movie. And when the woman tries to figure out whom the man and woman in the statues are, the man thinks it doesn't matter who they are: "Then I just said they might as well be you and me, or anybody else." When the man tries to convince the woman that last year she was there but she says she has never been to Frederiksbad, his further statement is that: "Then somewhere else perhaps, Karlstadt, Marienbad or Baden-Salsa, or even here in this salon." This kind of remark sounds very unlogical and absurd, but it also seems to reveal the nature of encounter, life or even existence. Furthermore, whenever the man mentions something that is of great importance to their last year's experience in the hotel, the woman seems to know some details, but at the same time she denies. We cannot tell whether it's the woman who is always trying to conceal the truth or it's the man that who is trying to lie.Throughout the whole movie , the audience cannot be sure whether what they are watching are the subjective reality through one or both characters' eye or it's the perspective of the director. And both in La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, the discussion of free will versus fate is involved. In La Jetée, the people of the "future" reject these scoriae of another time, that is, the past. But at the same time they couldn't deny it because humanity had survived and if he deny the past, the means of its survival is denied. And when the man tries to return to the world of his childhood and to the woman who's perhaps waiting to him, he could do nothing to help, but witness his own death. Before his death, he finally realizes that his own imagination lies to himself, and some parts of his life are forever lost. While in L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, after the man finally explains to the woman that it is her husband who shoots her in her bedroom, he quickly denies, "No, this isn't the right ending, I must have you alive." This statement blurs the boundary of time, which may suggests that the man is the saver who tries to rescue the woman to the "right ending" through time travel, or perhaps only his illusion. As usual, we cannot tell. Without seeing the actual outcome, it's highly doubted that the resistance from the helpless human beings against fate always turns out to be in vain: Human beings live in the paradox of free will and fate, whenever we practice our free will, we're trapped in the snare which is arranged by ourselves, that is, fate. And on the question that what's the meaning of existence, there's no answer but a sense of void. Works Cited: Neupert, Richard. A History of the French New Wave Cinema. London: The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, 2007. Collinson, Diané. Fifty Major Philosophers: A Reference Guide. London: British Library Cataloguing, 1987. Thompson and Bordwell. Film History. 450.