Allan C
I’d just watched director Alain Resnais’ masterpiece, HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR, and was blown away, so I had to check out one of his other films. In LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, he again explores the faultiness of memories, but with far less success. Telling a surreal story at a posh chateau where a man is convinced he and a woman met once before and had a torrid affair. Is it gaslighting? Is it repressed memories? Is it different perspectives on the same experience? I believe the filmmakers land on the latter, but it’s never made explicitly clear. You’re not always sure if we are in the present or a memory or even who is telling a particular story or memory at that moment. It’s audaciously filmed in a highly stylized manner, where entire rooms of people are frozen in place except for one or two characters or with strange and surreal repeated images. However, the film is emotionally distant and cold compared to HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR. It feels more like an exercise in cinema than trying to tell a human story. Resnais accomplishes what he set out to do, but it’s not as satisfying of a film experience.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/03/25
Full Review
Leaburn O
Stylish in a French art house way but tediously boring in a Drench art house way. Not for me. Watched on DVD.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/06/25
Full Review
Dave S
How best to describe Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad? Maybe something along the lines of ‘as James Joyce's Ulysses is to literature, Last Year at Marienbad is to cinema' – incomprehensible and impossibly frustrating with countless moments of unimaginable brilliance. The plot, if that is in fact what it is, concerns a man trying to convince a woman that they had an affair one year earlier. However, don't knock yourself out trying to piece things together because it can't be done – anyone who tells you that they understand it is a liar. What makes it so special are the striking visuals – spectacular cinematography give that gives the film a dream-like quality. It's the lighting and tracking shots and blocking that make the movie so memorable. Don't try to analyze it, just let it wash over you and you might find it to be a rewarding experience. Or maybe not.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
04/03/24
Full Review
Alec B
As hypnotic as it is enigmatic. Once you stop trying to figure out what is happening and simply allow yourself to fall under the movie's spell it's infinitely rewarding.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/03/24
Full Review
bhaxby
Jean Cocteau ran so that this film could walk.
What is the purpose of fiction and make-believe in film? I would say its function is two fold: either its to intersperse reality with dreams and flashbacks to add perspective on said reality - or its to envelop you entirely in the spellbinding fiction of the director as in a fantasy/art film. And then I saw this film, and realised that there was perhaps a third category. Where in fact characters A and X seem to start in the dream world, with people freezing mid-conversation other reality suspending moments, and are trying to work their way back to reality. So I will give it credit for being a unique take on fiction in film.
A film with a primary basis in fantasy often bewitches, but it also befuddles. The viewer has to be invested enough to stay with the filmmaker as he or she takes them through dizzying temporal and poetic leaps of faith and narrative distortions. This film does not do that. It litters potentially meaningful artistic leitmotifs like 'the Double' (A in a black feather shawl and white leather shawl), mise en abysme (paintings of the chateau courtyard inside the chateau), mythic statues that are supposed to theatricalise the lives of the characters and so on, in a way that is utterly random and haphazard. It's a shame because these artistic devices can be SO powerful in the hands of a filmmaker who knows what they're doing, like Hitchcock in Vertigo or Cocteau in Blood of a Poet, but it just feels like the Resnais wants the viewer to do all the work while bringing little to the artistic table himself.
The film is a bloated attempt at a meditation on memory and love made by a filmmaker with an outsized location budget and miniature imagination to match. The narrative about the decor of the chateau and the recanting of the affair is utterly prosaic and repetitive, no poetic flair at all - its honestly like elementary-school writing 'the walls had statues of angels' 'it was cold outside' 'you looked scared'.
I honestly believe that all the positive reviews are nothing more than nostalgia boners as the film flaunts all the aesthetic markers of a 'classic' "oh my god its in black and white, oh my god all the men look so smart in their tuxedos, oh my god vintage card games, oh my god the chateau - iT mUsT bE a ClAsSiC". You will notice that a lot of the positive reviews also focus on praising the location. Resnais did not build the location. He deserves no credit for artistic discernment on that. That's just called being a director with a big budget. It takes little artistic discernment to make a film shot in a beautiful chateau look...well...beautiful.
Again I refer you to Cocteau with his superior resourcefulness: beautiful homespun art films that have far more soul and uniqueness, as every poeticism provokes and tantalises and is densely packed with meaning, every artistic plot mechanism actually feels thoughtful and invites intrigue. The artistic merit of Cocteau's films entirely hinge on the imaginative flair of the director as he directed, screenwrote, designed costumes, acted and pioneered the overall artistic vision in a way that was very hands on. Compared to Resnais who was far more hands-off, a jumped-up 'Après Garde' filmmaker who was by comparison spoilt by a huge budget and utterly unresourceful in his imagination and creativity.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
08/14/23
Full Review
isla s
This is a somewhat hypnotic, part dream-like film. Its in black and white and that gives it a somewhat timeless feel to it I suppose. I felt that the setting of the hotel gave quite a looming sense to the viewer, when we see it from outside via external shots. The dialogue is mostly provided via voiceover type narration - the voice in question being somewhat laidback and casual in tone, as if recalling some distant ocassion, while in the background an organ can be heard playing. Its certainly an atmospheric watch. I believe its claimed that the film the Shining was partly inspired by this film, in terms of picturing the setting for the iconic hotel in that film. I can understand why.
The camerawork is very wispery - wispery and slow. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, it does add to the dreamlike sense it has, although perhaps it may not appeal to every film fan. I thought it did feel a little spooky/sinister, with the dialogue, the people trying to figure out what's what. It definitely has an unsettling sense to it, although I certainly wouldn't say its an outright scary film, its no slasher film or anything like that but there's a definite undertone thats hard to put your finger on exactly but it leaves you (as the viewer) wondering what the real truth may be, whats lurking underneath, so to speak. As I say, it has a hypnotic quality to it - its subtly intriguing, I'd say.
This is, for the most part, a somewhat arty film and as an example of French world cinema, I would certainly recommend it, although I would like to add that at times the organ music was a bit too loud for my taste, a bit too 'in your face' so to speak - not all the time, just at times. It isn't necessarily the easiest of films to 'get into' but its undoubtedly a good film in general otherwise.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
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