Could someone please explain Last Year At Marienbad to me?

I agree on Proust and think that there are also references to Sartre´s so-called phenomenological ontology (Being and Nothingness).

Thanks to all for trying to describe their own feelings or interpretations of this film, as I did on the earlier thread posted above. Hopefully, Frank will figure out a way to post his own paper on the film. Here is some more food for thought.

When looking at the meaning and background of Last Year at Marienbad, it might be helpful to look at the scriptwriter, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and his views on literature. Robbe-Grillet was part of a number of French writers that were trying to do something analogous in literature as the Nouvelle Vague French filmmakers were doing in film. Robbe-Grillet was one of the leading forces and theoreticians of what was called the Nouveau Roman. Other writers in the group included Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon. They were trying to create a modernist, more complex narrative structure, in the line with the works of Faulkner, Samuel Beckett, and other modernist writers. They thought the use of conventional narrative was boring and restrictive. They developed a set of literary techniques to break with conventions and shatter the idea of a story moving from point A to point B. One of the ways they fractured narrative conventions was by using repetition and ambiguity to convey complexity. Their aims were very similar to the French Nouvelle Vague and Godard’s groundbreaking Breathless.

We can see how the thematic needs of both Resnais and Robbe-Grillet were perfectly matched in LYaM. Both took from the other – one using literary techniques, the other cinematic to create a style that was unique to this film. Of course, the use of repetition is taken from the story the film is based on by Bioy Casares, whose own works were mirrored in Borges. It is difficult to take the style and story of LYaM out of context of the times and the motivation that both writer and filmmaker had to turn conventions in screenwriting and cinema on their head. They completely eschewed using any type of conventional narrative structure, instead using a circular pattern. This is clearly evident in the repeating images, repeating game, even repeating dialogue, and narration. All converge to give us a uniquely challenging and totally unconventional film. This film is more like a complex mathematical formula written on a chalkboard, where the formula is being erased as fast as it goes up – never allowing for any way of fully understanding it.

The film jumps back and forth in time, and never makes clear what is dream and what is reality. It is a labyrinth without a center and no decipherable exit points – except the meaning that the viewer attaches to the story and what is seen. Various alternative meanings co-exist simultaneously. There is not a ‘correct’ interpretation that invalidates all the others – just several possibly ‘correct’ interpretations. This was the clear intention of both Resnais and Robbe-Grillet when they put this elaborate jigsaw piece together.

Yes very well said, Bob, as usual; this site is lucky to have people like you and Apursansar. I’m disappointed when Marienbad is dismissed as a pretentious, empty shell that’s somehow conning its audience- when knowing about the driving forces, influences and motivation, the social and philosophical context behind it, is surely helpful and instructive, and can open up new avenues. There are countless possible interpretations, and none are right or wrong- infinite possibility meets the uncertainty principle. It challenges received wisdoms, pre-conceived ideas and the usual plot structures and points up subjectivity. I remember it was picked and trashed (as was Ivan the Terrible) in a book of Golden Turkeys by some quite well known right-wing brothers whose name eludes me for the moment. Like it or not, it’s a landmark. And what an exciting time that was for cinema, with L’Avventura and the French New Wave etc!

Tomorrow i may wake up to find i’m a purple and pink jelly-like blob on the planet Zoron (not Moron- that means carrot in Welsh) and my life has been a dream. I can’t be sure anyone here or the internet really exist- i may wake up tomorrow and find i’m me but that was all a dream. I may exist in parallel universes. We could all be part of some giant computer game played by unimaginably brilliant aliens or beings, and may be switched off. And so on.

Well, why not look at the three characters as id, ego and super ego. Go at it any way you like.

Fact is that the film is nearly 50 years old and it still generates discussion and controversy. If it were a slick con the talk would be over.

I have to say that I am fairly new at viewing and thinking about this film, and without the benefit of any knowledge regarding it’s literary background, or it’s distinctive place in film history contexts, I was mainly struck by it’s claustrophobic nature. In fact, I couldn’t resist thinking that the repetition by the narrator, in scenes, with multiple variations, was the depiction of being inside someone’s head as he obssessively replays events of seduction and tragedy in his mind. The various people in the crowd do little, as they would do little in someone’s neurotic memory, as the primary images of the narrator’s “story” play and replay. Maybe I’ve known some of my own sort of romantic obsession in the past enough to recognize those kinds of thoughts, with their terribly ornate settings, as being expressed in Last Year In Marianbad.

But basically, I felt that the film was about experiencing the repetitive and shifting thoughts of a psychologically tormented man.

I don’t think it hurts to read up on a little bit of Bergson’s theories on time. You don’t have to read a book or anything, even the little blurb on Wikipedia would do. If you do want to read a pretty good short book about Resnais, check out “Alain Resnais or the Theme of Time.”

I would create theories in my head, but they just didn’t work. But, I love watching it and its one of my all time favorites. This is just one of those movies that is near-impossible to figure out and maybe incomprehensible.

Watched it last night (the Criterion release has some nice extras, good package) and was struck b the implications of rape. Something I’d never noticed.

What does it mean? Don’t know, it’s just the gift that keeps on giving.

Dig up Pauline Kael’s review of the film, she puts it in excellent perspective.

The movie is meaningless self-indulgence, on the part of the filmmaker and the audience.

Delphine Seyrig= serious BABE

I just found this intersting essay on the film. (scroll down to page 83)

http://books.google.com/books?id=ses-4mfh93AC&pg=PA92&dq=Screen/memory+:+rape+and+its+alibis+in+Last+Year+at+Marienbad+/+Lynn+A.+Higgins.&ei=7zFNSrOVHZP8zQS1j_zoAg&hl=en

Well I finally watched this film and tried to set myself up that it wouldn’t make sense and it would be boring, but hey, it’s only 90 minutes! So I just imagined it couldn’t be any worse than staring at a blank wall for 90 minutes. Suffice to say, with that setup, it wasn’t that bad. It was beautiful to look at and the voice over, coupled with the organ (which reminded me of Carnival of Souls), made for a hypnotic experience. I’ll never watch the film again and I have zero interest debating it or even learning what it’s about (particularly after some of the quotes above, include Resnais not knowing what it’s about, his interest in particles, and a disagreement with the screenwriter over what the plot was). Those things are enough for me to say “Thanks but no thanks.”

Worth seeing so you can say you saw it and impress all your friends. That’s about it.

I found the most hypnotic and captivating thing I have ever seen, but I think I am in the minority.

My criterion copy of this movie does not allow for the option for “restored sound” to be picked- despite the fact that the text says something about the director wanting both the new and the original to be options, and the option is there, but it can’t be selected…. strange.

Also, the film is letterboxed, and there is plenty of room beneath the frame for subtitles, but nonetheless the subtitles are right there on the frame, glowing jagged pixels of antique digital know-how. Are the subtitles on the screen in case someone has a wide screen. don’t get it. Naive question: Is there someway I can control subtitle placement?

This movie was a blind buy, (there is a thread for that somewhere) and I found it very enjoyable and watched it twice. I only wish Pauline Kael was alive. I would have loved to have watched it with her next to me, squirming uncomfortably, rolling her eyes, composing her strident review in her head, barely paying attention. What I am saying is this film was kind of a guilty pleasure- because I did realize how laughably “arty” it was, and yet I was reeled in… to be honest, it felt like a great Star Trek Next Generation “Time Loop” episode, only without Riker and Picard stomping around-

From another MUBI thread:

Here’s a frame in MARIENBAD that features a cardboard cutout of Alfred Hitchcock (in the shadows on screen right). This explains the entire movie! :-)

you’re mistaken, that’s not Hitchcock, it’s J. Edgar Hoover. Levitating no less…