Film Journal: La Jetée

Here are some more thoughts about the cinematic endeavors I have been resting my eyes upon. Inside are lengthy thoughts and discussions about the movie La Jetée, by Chris Marker.

La Jetee – Chris Marker – 16mm film, Black and White

There are still images of destruction and a voiceover telling the story of how before World War 3 Paris was blown up. The context of this story is that there were experiments carried out on prisoners, and that this is the story of one of those prisoners.

One aspect about this visual style that immediately strikes me is the expressive capability of the seemingly very constrained and limited nature of using a succession of still images “glued” together with a paste of sound. Without the sound, this would just be a photographic montage, but with it, the images are melded together into something almost like a cinematic experience, but somehow outside of this, and to me almost more interesting in its stylistic rebellion.

It is revealed that the unique and defining attribute of a prisoner fit for this type of experimentation is a man glued to images of the past; fixated only on images of the past, enabling him possibly to live in the past and subsequently bring back supplies (the actual (?) goal of the experimenters?). That this information, being the essential premise of this story, is conveyed entirely by the words of the voiceover, illustrates just how powerful the spoken word is in this type of experimental narrative.

The sound design contributes greatly to building and sustaining the experiential tension experienced by the viewer, counterbalancing what might otherwise be a deficit in the poignancy of the cinematic narrative brought about by the altered paradigm from a standard full-motion film, of a sequence of still images. In other words, I think the sound design contributes the intensity that might be lacking as a result of the stylistic attributes of the visual stream of information in the film. One example of this is the hammering thumping sound that builds the tension we imagine the main character of the prisoner to be feeling in his striving to achieve lucid experience of the past.

The shifting perspectives of the visual elements of this film are particularly intriguing. In the first portions of this film, the images displayed are of a 3rd person feel, displaying in an ambiguous space the experimenters and the prisoner. As the film shifts to feature the experiences of the prisoner in the “past”, the visuals shift to what he sees — first person. This makes sense conceptually because it is his dream, his imagination, his experience. He sees the girl, but she doesn’t see him, because he is dreaming her in a ‘timeless world in the past’. When they ‘meet on the 30th day’, he finally appears in the images, interacting with the girl. This indicates a shift in perspective; He has gone from observing his imaginings – watching his dreams play back – to actually being able to affect them and place himself in them. Interestingly, the visual style really makes conceptual sense; the main character is imagining a (or his) past, trying to make it vivid enough (and place himself lucidly enough in it) to make it actually real. The fractured nature of the still image sequence complements this idea, and contributes to a feel of broken reality, almost as if his experience of reality is just not as real as reality, but that he is trying very very hard to make this thing, which he is imagining, as real as he possibly can. Thus, if full motion film is presented as an analogue of ‘reality’, then fractured images represents an imagined or dreamlike perception of reality. There is a conflict in the film between these two perceptions of reality, mirrored in the visual conflict in the film between the fractured motion of the still image-sequence style and our desire to see full motion

“Time builds around them.” She asks about his combat necklace from the beginning of the war; he is from the future. He falls back into his own time, and they give him another shot to send him back. He knows that she is dead in his own world. Everyone else is dead.

I have the definite feeling watching this that each image was chosen with very careful consideration of emotive properties, and aesthetics, and purpose in progression of storyline. Crossfades are still used between stills to convey a sense of motion, or progression.

There is a sudden flash of near-realtime motion! The girl lying on the bed, her head, her arm, a pillow. How fitting that the very focus of this man’s imaginary (?) perception of reality should come the absolute closest to being real, in representation. This seems to represent the point in his own experience that he becomes unsure about which reality is more real for him, his life as a prisoner being experimented upon, or his dream of his imagined past.

On the 20th day, they visit an ageless animal museum together. Now he can stay there without trouble.

Marker is definitely using the visual style as a conceptual device in the telling of the story.

The girl welcomes the visitor who comes and goes as a natural phenomenon. Then he made out how they were going to shift him into the future.

At the heart of this sci-fi film there is a love story. Men from the world in the future also travelled through time. They accepted him, but he wanted to be with the girl in the past.

The man with glasses. This man is hinted to be the head-experimenter (06:50).

He saw himself die as a child. The man with the glasses is present there, at his death. What does this mean? I need to watch this again to succeed at a legitimate interpretation. This film, despite being only 26 minutes long is a perfect little nugget of a story.