Audience Member
J'ai pas du tout trippé
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Another puzzle film from Alain Resnais, his third feature (after Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad). As in the earlier films, the trick is to try to piece together the "facts" of the narrative from the behaviors shown and the statements of the various characters. However, as in real life, these "clues" may be subject to duplicity, randomness, irrelevance, transience, and so on. That is, our actions, statements, and, yes, thoughts and feelings may hold little bearing for our true pasts, presents, or futures. To put this another way, we are all impacted by real and faulty memories of our pasts, current perceptions (also accurate or misbegotten) of the situations and relationships we find ourselves in, and motivations and expectations for the future (realistic or unrealistic). So, trying to pinpoint the psychological experience of another person from the outside seems an impossible task. Of course, this is exactly the task that Resnais sets for us in Muriel. Unlike other film directors, he refuses to "set the stage" and provide exposition that tells viewers the facts of the story that they couldn't otherwise know. True, some of our other better directors (such as the Iranians Farhadi or Kiarostami) force us to figure out what is happening and leave room for subjectivity in their equations, but no one engages in as much wilful misdirection as Resnais, while somehow remaining true to how people really experience their lives, in bursts of disconnected cognitive and affective experiences. Resnais's editing style follow this logic, with an array of jump-cuts and non-sequiturs thrown in amidst the more straightforward (but still strangely detached) narrative sequences. The plot, for what it is worth, revolves around Delphine Seyrig's antique dealer who summons an old lover from the past to visit her in Bologne. He has (apparently) spent 15 years in Algeria, from where her stepson has just returned after a stint in the military. Over the course of the film, we and they try to reconcile their conflicting memories of their shared past, to navigate their current interactions and living arrangements, and to understand what is possible for their future together (or apart). Meanwhile, the stepson has to cope with traumatic memories of the torture of a girl, Muriel, that he witnessed during the war.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/04/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Resnais's third feature is a little less inviting than his previous two, but offers a challenging fragmented way to look at traumatized characters and their difficulty in recollecting their past.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/12/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The second half just doesn't make any sense. I'm lost.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Films having an episodic structure simulating the dream realm can be either terrible alienating projects or very engaging puzzles. Give a puzzle to Resnais, and you've got an enygma, most probably indecipherable. Is that good? Truth to be told, not for everybody.
It all begins simple. A middle-aged woman named Hélène lives with her stepson Bernard selling antique furniture. One day, she re-encounters with a man who was her lover more than 20 years ago. He makes a visit which unravels too many questions and confessions eager to be clarified. Tension rises. Arguments ensue. Meanwhile, Bernard is haunted by the memory of "Muriel", a woman she met while fighting in Algeria. He might have had some participation in a partially explained tragic outcome of Muriel, as his conscience spoken out loud suggests in fragments.
Divided into two segments, the second one being divided itself into thousands, the film begins with a seemingly straightforward narrative for later shattering any possible narrative structure and simulating a dream. It is not entirely classifiable as a nightmare, but rather as a revelatory dream with disturbing moments, like most of them are in their lack of logical coherence. The pieces of the puzzle are more important to Resnais than their logical formation. That is why we saw experimentation with time and chronology in <i>Hiroshima mon Amour</i> (1959) and experimentation with symbolic narrative based on memory fragments in <i>Last Year at Marienbad</i> (1961). In this case, the ambitious purpose was to now experiment with both at the same time.
Although the final product may result impenetrable for various viewers, it is impossible for us curious movie-watchers - who have a tendency to appreciate things visually as well - not to be captivated by this enygma the more complex it gets. The second half portrays a storm of memories, fantasies, arguments and revelations, which may result in a different panoramic view for every observer. The more fractured and frenetic the whole show became, the scarier it was, and the more attractive it got. Even if it didn't carry that groundbreaking impressionistic impact of the previous masterpieces by Resnais, it truly carries a trademark style that refuses to be classified as a French New Wave film, but as a class apart. And just like in a dream, everything here speaks truths, but most of them either disguised, fantasized or exaggerated.
Cada persona es un mundo.
84/100
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
Full Review
jack c
http://film-forward.com/muriel.html
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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