Chris Marker is known primarily for his cinematic essays, though La Jetee, his best known work, is a science fiction short. In all of but 28 minutes, and using almost exclusively still photos, Marker creates a masterpiece.
The story begins with a man (Davos Hanich) "marked by an image of his childhood." The image the man remembers is the face of a woman (Helene Chatelain), but also a man being shot on the jetty at Orly Airport. We also learn, "The face he had seen was the only peacetime image to survive the war,"
The rest of the film takes place in the aftermath of World War III, where, "The survivors settled underground." Because of his obsession with a memory, the man is subjected to experiments by scientists who find the potential for time travel in the man's memory. In his "travels," the man goes back to the past and falls in love with the woman who left such a strong impression on him, but the scientists need him to go into the future in order to get supplies necessary for human survival. Finally, after he gets the supplies, the man learns he is no longer useful to the scientists, so they will kill him. He is saved by the people he met in the future who offer him escape to their world, but he chooses to return to the past where he can be with the woman.
Throughout the film, Marker makes his impact by suggesting that the man's greatest obstacle is not the scientists, but time. And the hints are deeply submerged in the film. For example, the famous scene where the woman looks like she is in a photograph, but she blinks her eyes as if she may be looking back at us. Beside being a haunting image, it foreshadows the oncoming reality of time itself.
Another statement Marker makes is through the parallel to Hitchcock's Vertigo. In the scene where the woman and man are standing in front of a cutout from an old tree, the woman says something to the man, but he does not understand because it is a name in English. Considering the overt visual reference of the tree cutout to a similar scene in Vertigo, and possibly even Hitchcock's name, the man is losing his stable connection with reality, much like Kim Novak's (and not James Stewart's) character in Vertigo. Marker is more emphatic than Hitchcock in terms of pitting his character against time, but both films have a character looking at the rings of a tree (years) with disoriented eyes.
A last example comes from the experiments the man undergoes. We learn from the narrator, "On the tenth day images begin to appear--like confessions." What is interesting, subversive even, is that we cannot take for granted that the scientists are gloating over the images, or that their methods, likened to torture, are able to elicit the images. As scientists, their agreed upon mission is to find a possible method of time travel and in fact, the quantifiable element is that it was the tenth day. Time is not what we first think of, but it is probably what the scientists were measuring.
The ending, however, also reveals that the man is not subject to the scientists, but to time. In order to explain without giving away the ending, the man goes back to the past and crosses paths with his childhood self, the woman, and the man he saw shot that day on the jetty. But is the man choosing to go back to the past, or is he doomed to be there? While there is no easy way to decide an ultimate arbiter in such a question, it is clear that whether the man chooses or is destined, whether he is subject to the present only or otherwise able to move across time, he is still unable to escape time itself.
IMDb rates this film 8.2 stars out of 10
Film 101 rates this film 4 stars out of 5
The rest of the film takes place in the aftermath of World War III, where, "The survivors settled underground." Because of his obsession with a memory, the man is subjected to experiments by scientists who find the potential for time travel in the man's memory. In his "travels," the man goes back to the past and falls in love with the woman who left such a strong impression on him, but the scientists need him to go into the future in order to get supplies necessary for human survival. Finally, after he gets the supplies, the man learns he is no longer useful to the scientists, so they will kill him. He is saved by the people he met in the future who offer him escape to their world, but he chooses to return to the past where he can be with the woman.
Throughout the film, Marker makes his impact by suggesting that the man's greatest obstacle is not the scientists, but time. And the hints are deeply submerged in the film. For example, the famous scene where the woman looks like she is in a photograph, but she blinks her eyes as if she may be looking back at us. Beside being a haunting image, it foreshadows the oncoming reality of time itself.
Another statement Marker makes is through the parallel to Hitchcock's Vertigo. In the scene where the woman and man are standing in front of a cutout from an old tree, the woman says something to the man, but he does not understand because it is a name in English. Considering the overt visual reference of the tree cutout to a similar scene in Vertigo, and possibly even Hitchcock's name, the man is losing his stable connection with reality, much like Kim Novak's (and not James Stewart's) character in Vertigo. Marker is more emphatic than Hitchcock in terms of pitting his character against time, but both films have a character looking at the rings of a tree (years) with disoriented eyes.
A last example comes from the experiments the man undergoes. We learn from the narrator, "On the tenth day images begin to appear--like confessions." What is interesting, subversive even, is that we cannot take for granted that the scientists are gloating over the images, or that their methods, likened to torture, are able to elicit the images. As scientists, their agreed upon mission is to find a possible method of time travel and in fact, the quantifiable element is that it was the tenth day. Time is not what we first think of, but it is probably what the scientists were measuring.
The ending, however, also reveals that the man is not subject to the scientists, but to time. In order to explain without giving away the ending, the man goes back to the past and crosses paths with his childhood self, the woman, and the man he saw shot that day on the jetty. But is the man choosing to go back to the past, or is he doomed to be there? While there is no easy way to decide an ultimate arbiter in such a question, it is clear that whether the man chooses or is destined, whether he is subject to the present only or otherwise able to move across time, he is still unable to escape time itself.
IMDb rates this film 8.2 stars out of 10
Film 101 rates this film 4 stars out of 5
