The Juxtaposition Analysis of La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad
Kenneth Fang
La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad are comparable. In terms of the same theme of time travel, the similar aesthetic perception of Left Bank Group in French New Wave, La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad share something common. But still, they respectively has their own distinctive attributes in the aspects such as cinematic languages and the connotation behind. In the following paragraphs, the similarities and differences between La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad and their own features will be argued.
La Jetée is unfolded mostly in the subjective perception of the unknown man: After WWIII, Paris is ruined, and he’s sent to time travel experiments for the sake of the present because of his strong obsession of the image from the past, that is, a woman who he always meets in his memory and then in the time travel. Even in his earliest memory he has seen the mysterious woman at the jetty and at the same time the death of a man. It is believed that both La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad may be influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson, while in my opinion, it’s more obvious for La Jetée.
In Bergson’s philosophy, the concept of time is of great significance: “He distinguished between scientific time as measured by clocks and other devices, and pure time, a flowing sequence of continuous events which we experience immediately and within which it is sometimes possible, he claims, to act freely and authentically.” (Collinson 130) That is, in Bergson’s point of view, rather than a material entity that is fixed and can be measured and divided by scientific devices, time is actually something only exists in our consciousness and perception, and it’s dynamic, vibrant and fleeting like the continuous flow of consciousness and life. Our memory and even our whole life will be changed, as long as our perception of time is changed.
So in La Jetée, the direction of time is actually removed, the past, present and future interlaces with each other, which makes them not distinguishable any more. In the end of the movie, we find that the man whose death is perceived at the jetty by him in his so called childhood memory is actually himself. Through the view of the man, what we find is not the objective truth any more, but the subjective reality in his mind which makes him trapped in certain moments and also removes the real elements in his past life that his memory is composed of. Then we can never be sure that when and where the man meets the woman, and whether they are actually lovers, and most importantly, whether the truth is exactly what it is perceived by the man.
And notably, La Jetée, being different from other movies, La Jetée is composed of still photographs instead of motion pictures, which creates a sense of heaviness and separation. And to some extent it reverts the nature of motion pictures and process of the recall of memory.
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.
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