When we first watched this film, I thought it was one of the most difficult films to focus on, one of the most difficult to understand, and to be honest, kind of boring. The repeating lines, scenes, and the extremely annoying organ music almost lulled me to sleep. Situations and characters confused the heck out of me and I spent the whole movie just trying to make sense of a scene or a small piece of the movie. Did they meet before? The title suggests yes but as I watched, thought about the film, and tried to put pieces together, I don’t think that they ever met and this may have been just daydream in character X’s head or possibly a just a dream that he had. I had the strangest feeling of déjà vu throughout the film because of repetitive lines and scenes. Scenes that I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen before still visually felt eerily familiar. The names of the characters (X, A, M) were seemingly fitting because I felt as if everyone in the film was treated as an object or objects in a game that could be manipulated, like in the game that was played in the film. The shot of the people in the garden even looked to me if the garden was a giant game-board and the people were just little pieces of this game. I sense a definite disconnection between the two and even alienation of A from X because no matter how many times the man “plays out” and creates different scenarios, the girl never “remembers” last year in Marienbad.
I guess this is where solipsism comes in and also skepticism. Character X experiences this solipsism and thinks that everything that is happening is real, and the fact that he is trying to control A and prove that she is real as well. We as viewers experience skepticism as to if what is happening is real, and also if X, A, and M are even real themselves in this surreal setting and environment and even in the end, we never really know what happens between X and A.
The garden as a game board is a really cool comparison I never would have thought of! It makes sense to think of the plot and characters this way-- they really do seem like pawns in a game, no matter how hard X tries to play differently he can't pull it off.
ReplyDeleteThe film isn't only about X's skepticism about life and existence, but also our skepticism about what we can rely on in the plot and characters. Definitely a really weird movie! I too had a really hard time with it.
Good job!
I like your comparison of the characters to a game. It makes me think of a video game in which X playes a virtual pick up game. He keeps making the wrong choices and decides to load from the last save. I think there was a rape video game in the 90s that could be compared to this movie :p
ReplyDeleteYeah I did like that you talked about that one scene that a lot of people think of when they see this film. That game board comparison with that shot made me think of the very first harry potter film where they had to battle across a giant chess board so nice one lol.
ReplyDeleteThe deja vu feeliing that you were talking about is a great insight because I think it just helps amplify the whole trapped feeling that is portrayed throught the film so that also was a good spot.
I like everyone else really liked your point about the one particular shot looking like a game board with game pieces placed on it. I don’t really have a lot to say about the point other than I think it’s a spot on comment that seems to fit perfectly with the way everyone is interpreting the film.
ReplyDeleteI think that there’s so much going on in this film that the plot and questions concerning the plot and characters really don’t matter too much. If Resnais wanted that to be his focus he would but as the reading stated, he made a conscious decision to make much of the film ambiguous and almost uncertain. I think the déjà vu you’re experiencing is probably a result of action and dialogue that is frequently and many times subliminally repeated over and over again. The fact that certain characters have the same conversations multiple times throughout the film in different locations and times, really makes you question the information the filmmakers are giving to you.
I agree with everyone here. I'd have really liked to see you play with the board game observation. It's a really good one. Games are one of the central visual metaphors in this movie, and it's a lot easier to deal with playing with visual metaphors than it is trying to track a plot that really isn't there.
ReplyDelete