Last Year at Marienbad

Rating:
Summary: It's in French
Review: It's in French with English subtitles. I understand French, but I still need the subtitles. It was a waste of money for me. I didn't read the description carefully.

I saw this movie in a theater, and it was in English, and I loved it.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and rather creepy
Review: The movie has very nice photography, especially if you like rococo settings (it may be French Baroque, but it is rococo in its effect here). There is no straightforward plot movement, little dialogue and an extended monologue and because the camera lingers on the many tableaux the film seems to drag. These factors make it rather difficult to watch the film in one sitting.
Nevertheless, the movie has an interesting cumulative effect and several `inside' references (despite a denial of this by the scriptwriter, Robbe-Grillet); the surroundings are a dominant part of the cast. There is something inhuman and disturbing about the style (which goes under, I think, objectivism, and was in vogue in the `anti-novel' of Robbe-Grillet and others in the 60's and 70's.) and the movie is a good working out of this philosophy.
And, despite all I said above, it is entertaining.

Rating:
Summary: Did They or Didn't They
Review: Last Year at Marienbad is a classic of the French New Wave and was one of the most influential films of the 1960s. Director Alain Resnais has given us a puzzle film that is impossible to understand. It is just as impossible to not be caught up the lyrical mythical qualities of this film.

On the surface this is a story of a man who believes that he had an affair with a woman the previous year although she denies it. But this is also an unsurpassed tale of pure filmmaking.

Resnais is addressing the idea of how we percieve movies and making a direct confrontation with traditional Hollywood filmmaking. He is perhaps also making points about memory. It is also possible that he is making points about ourselves.

This is only a film for the sophisticated viewer and every film fan or historian should own it. Why own? Because you'll need to see it dozens of times. That a film that is unknowable could also be suspenseful and addicting is part of it's power.

There is not a misstep in the entire movie and I am truly thankful that such a wonderful movie is out on DVD. Buy it.

Rating:
Summary: Your time will disappear as well...
Review: Last Year at Marienbad is a puzzle, an enigma, a formal logic problem, an unsettling horror, a beautiful poem, utter nonsense, but unavoidable, unstoppable at that.

This film must be seen; there is no way to explain it. It is completely sterile, emotionless, yet at the same time intense, full of more feeling than most films I've ever seen. It is a formal problem: does then exist, and if so, is then now -- and if not, how can now be, but if so, how can then be? Just like the questions it asks, the images can't remain still, never stop, don't pause to make sense, don't know what they are trying to be, or trying to help you to see. You and it are forever in motion, folding back in on yourselves. Is this a film about itself, or is this not really any film at all? Are you a viewer, or are you playing the game on the screen which never seems to end, yet ends every time the same way? Is it a game at all?

And are you feeling nothing or are you ready to explode, ready to cry out, ready to cover your eyes, ready to make a wish for her husband (Is he her husband?) or her lover (Is he her lover?) or for her (Is she really even still alive? Was she ever even really there?)... There are moments in this film that will stun you, make you flinch, make you forget that it's gone on for hours and hours already. Is that her crying out, or is it you? Is anyone crying out at all, or did it never happen, like the film itself? Once you're done, you'll wonder where the time went, even though you'll remember just how much time it took.

And you won't be able to explain it.

Insufferable. Pretentious.

Remarkable.

Rating:
Summary: Don't think, Just Look.
Review: LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD is virtually without peer in the cinema. It has caused a great deal of controversy over the years, with some claiming it as one of the greatest films ever made, others claiming that it must be some sort French joke on the audience. For those of you familiar with French films in general, you know that bad French movies tend to consist of a few characters discoursing about love in a stilted, soap-opera-like manner. Set against this context, LYAM is indeed a joke, a brilliant satire. The banality of the love triangle also pokes very Gallic fun at the annoying cliches of Hollywood melodrama. Part of the confusion caused by this film comes from the standard nature of the plot - our expectations about how this type of film should work are constantly set up, then thouroughly compromised from the opening sequence of the movie. Viewers are rarely cognizant of just how much we have internalized standard Hollywood techniques as the ONLY way of using cinematic forms to tell a story, which should have a beginning, middle and end, but MARIENBAD cannot be understood this way, although there is indeed a progression to this bizarre narrative, which takes the form of Man Y's increasingly elaborate explanations of what might have happened between him and the Woman in her room, which might have been either rape or seduction. It is a profoundly VISUAL film that can only be understood if you use your eyes carefully. The action is split completely from the dialogue, which goes over the same issues again and again in settings that indicate different times of day and of the year. Some of these scenes are flashbacks, some may only be the narrator's fantasy. In MARIENBAD, past, present and future coexist simultaneously. What MARIENBAD dramatizes is the relative quality of human memory. We tend to organize our perceptions of the world in linear fashion, but memory is non-linear, collapsing past and present into a single entity. Subjectivity is crucial to understanding MARIENBAD, which examines the way in which each participant in a given event experiences the same event differently. Lawyers know that if you have six different eywitnesses to an event, you will get six different stories about what happened, and this relativity of memory is basically what MARIENBAD is about. Once you know this, MARIENBAD is actually quite easy to understand and to follow, at least in terms of the "plot." Now just sit back and admire the unbelievably rich technique the film uses to explore this idea. The moving camera tracks by frozen humans, assimilating them within the overall decor, are combined with astonishing editing techniques which alternately slow down or extend time itself through fragmentation or repetition. The performances (and the actors REALLY ARE BRILLIANT - I can hardly imagine how difficult this film must have been to act) accomplish the same thing through similar means. This film should be watched at least 3 times, once just to accustom yourself to its unique rhythms, a second to appreciate the complex structure, and a third for the humour of it. MARIENBAD is a truly mind-boggling experience.

Rating:
Summary: It's Art.
Review: There's a game in this film which is played over and over. It's the most obviously fitting motif in this movie, which is a game in itself. A quite tricky one. Romors has it Resnais was playing a joke... This is a must for all movie lovers: The B&W Cinematography is one of the most tastefully Cinemascope filling material I've ever seen. Still, it's not only the camerawork, it's the narrative playfulness, and some clips where persons are transferred to another setting within a body movement... Nice. Of all the greatest films of the French New Wave, this is the most elegantly playful and mindtwisting I've seen. See it, and see it again.

Rating:
Summary: boring, infuriating, frustrating, what else?
Review: It's often ranked as one of the "greatest films of all time." I found it long, boring, frustrating and infuriating to watch. I know, it's supposed to be an example of the nonnarrative film if you will. It's a "european art film" that is the exact polar opposite to the Classical Hollywood filmaking style. The film is all vague, some vague plot about an somebody having an affair, the characters are named X and Y, it all looks like some Calvin Klein perfume commercial. Abstract, okay I got the point after the first half hour. Did the movie have to be a whole hour and half of this? If I ever have to watch this movie again, will somebody please shoot me.

Rating:
Summary: Puts the fartsy back in artsy
Review: The photography in "Last Year at Marienbad" is remarkable, both in terms of technical virtuosity and imaginative composition. Someone examining still photos from this movie would conclude that it is probably a fine film, possibly a great one. Unfortunately, that person would be very, very wrong.

In fact, "Marienbad" is a vacuous, emotionally sterile, and hopelessly pretentious botch. The content is trivial, yet presented with grotesque self-importance. The film is a mind-numbing 90-minute bore with all the significance of one of those "artistic" black-and-while Calvin Klein TV commercials. (This is something of an insult to the actors in the CK ads, who at least manage to convey human-like expressions, unlike the mannequins of Marienbad.)

This film has been controversial ever since its release. Despite accolades from many, it was ruthlessly panned by the Los Angeles Times ("interminable") and Newsweek ("elaborate, ponderous, and meaningless"). More than 15 years after its first appearance, it earned a spot in Harry Medved's book "The 50 Worst Films of All Time."

Interested viewers are strongly advised to rent this film before buying it. Those who'd like to see a *substantive* movie about three people in a strange hotel should check out Ingmar Bergman's "The Silence," which outdistances "Last Year" by about as much as "Madame Bovary" surpasses "Mary Worth."

Side note: The game played over and over and over in this film -- over and over, cyclical series of feckless contests, appearing in scene after scene, over and over, contests with no hope, cyclically returning, please kill me now -- is a very old game called Nim. It had been exhaustively analyzed for any number of counters by 1901; see Chapter 15 of Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions" (1959) for the general strategy. The 7-5-3-1 game has a fairly easy solution: ensure that each of your moves ends on one of these "safe" positions:

5511, 4411, 3311, or 2211;

55, 44, 33, or 22;

111, 123, 246, or (the one oddball) 145.

These "stepping stones" are easily reached if your opponent takes at least two matches on the first move. If your opponent initially takes only one match, respond by taking one match from the 7-row (or from any row *other* than 7 if your opponent took from the 7-row).

Believe me, there's nothing in the movie that justifies this level of analysis.

Rating:
Summary: Just Listen
Review: LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD is unique in so many ways that it is difficult to know where to start to describe it. Perhaps the most fruitful is to note that it is certainly one of the most elegantly crafted films ever made. A former editor, director Alain Resnais's work always has a peerless sense of rhythm; his images seem to dance effortlessly across the screen. He is helped considerably here by his cinematographer, Sacha Vierny (perhaps better known now for his collaborations with Peter Greenaway), who bathes the film in a soft, opalescent light. (The glacially smooth camera movements anticipate the Steadicam by fifteen years.)

Glowing in this pearly light is designer Jacques Saulnier's vaguely disquieting and ambivalently luxurious Rococo hotel. The film seamlessly combines locations and sound stage sets into an all-embracing, chilly whole. The white walls, gilded chinoiserie details and marble floors lend the film a candy-box charm. Opening the box yields not sweet confections, however, but a nearly claustrophobic totality, a fantasized projection entirely in keeping with novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet's obsessive, repetitive writing. As the camera glides down the immaculate hallways, it does not so much illustrate Robbe-Grillet's text, or even build an environment in which it can be recited, as create a visual equivalent to *listening to* a sinuously rhythmed, incantatory, sentence like "...le long de ces couloirs,-à travers ces salons, ces galeries, dans cette construction d'un autre siècle, cet hôtel immense, luxueux, baroque,-lugubre, où des couloirs interminables, succèdent aux couloirs,..."

I am not fluent in French, and I cannot translate these lines. That is part of the point. You can enjoy MARIENBAD without understanding the language. Indeed, it may be better if you do not, since you are less likely to worry about what it "means" and to enjoy it simply for its musical rhythm and texture. In fact, I strongly recommend that you turn off the subtitles on your DVD and allow yourself to bask in the film's rich aural tonalities.

The filmmakers have no difficulty involving us sensually, but they are indifferent to engrossing us emotionally. While each of the principles is remarkably controlled, even witty, their "characterizations" are flat and diagrammatic. The "story" of MARIENBAD is our response to the film's unfolding. Sight, sound, texture, voice and sensation are its real subject. For those willing to experience it without prejudice, MARIENBAD is fantastically rewarding, ever-changing. For those who insist on asking "what does it mean?" or "did they or did they not really meet last year?" expect only confusion, frustration, bafflement and disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Sailing into seas of uncharted film waters.
Review: The brilliant Last Year At Marienbad truly goes where no other film has tread before.The director Alain Resnais actually delves into Einstein`s theory of relativity but applies it to the language,theory,and chronological dynamics of film.By using editing techniques one can freeze accellerate or slow the time of a film by simply altering,splicing or tampering with the frames or pacing of the projectors film speed.The scene in the ballroom that appears early in the film involving idle rich couples who at once freeze.The film itself however does not frezze only the inhabitants in it freeze.It`s all relative.If you were IN the film ,time would stand still from the perspectives of the actor`s"TIME".From the viewer`s point of view the film appears to have halted,but a creepy sensation sets in that it all may be an allusion!.Like nature itself the film is also timeless.Many words and scenes are repeated just as nature repeats and recycles as it changes.Many enigmas abound throughout. See this lovely allegorical masterpiece now!