Even after more than 60 years since its release, Last Year at Marienbad, directed by Alain Resnais and written by Alain Robbe-Grillet, remains one of the most mysterious European intellectual film experiments. Thousands of studies have been written about it, mountains of polemical copies have been broken while discussing it, as much love and admiration have been expressed toward the film as a misunderstanding and even contempt. And the film which possesses a charming hypnotic appeal, still does not reveal its secrets and invites the viewers to decide for themselves what happened last year (or not last) in Marienbad, or not even there at all, but in Fredericksburg, and did it happen at all? And what is happening in a deserted grand hotel where past meets present as Sacha Verney's camera zooms in on the faces of two guests, snatching them from a crowd of elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen moving aimlessly as if in a trance? The unnamed man and woman may or may not have known each other since last year. With desperate perseverance, He will call on Her to remember their last year's meetings, which She will deny first with polite indifference and then with great bewilderment and uncertainty.
Are the viewers, following the advice of screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet, ready to immerse themselves in the screen world of Marienbad, opening the door to purely sensory perception? Such an approach will make it possible to appreciate the surreal mystique of the film, its versatility, the non-linear development of the action based on free movement in time and space, as well as the amazing openness of Last year... to any interpretation. The viewer becomes an "accomplice in crime", he can join the secrets of the film, offer his own interpretation and, thereby, come closer to understanding its essence. Very possible that someone will see only emptiness, raised to the level of complicated significance, and tastefully packaged in an elegant box of pretentiousness. Well, this is also one of the interpretations of the film, about which its creator Alain Resnais said that "Last year at Marienbad" does not make any sense, but inspires endless reflections. While working on it, Resnais reflected on such subjects as loneliness, uncertainty, ambiguity, and unconscious fear of repressed desires that tormented the heroes of the film and which the director embodied on the screen in hypnotic images. The illusory, deceptive, and indefinite world of the film is subject to its own internal rhythm and exists in symmetrical compositions, mirror reflections, and instant collisions of white and black colors, in a geometrically built garden in which only people cast shadows, but trees and bushes do not. The long camera movements through endless corridors and salons visually increase the size of the hotel, a full-fledged character of the film, making the building an endless and intricate labyrinth in which the characters circle like lost souls in purgatory. Their only hope of escaping the labyrinth is memory. Only memory can indicate the exit to the world of the living.
Memory and its irresistible power over us have been the subject of keen interest for Alain Resnais throughout his creative life, starting with the first feature film, Hiroshima Mon Amour. The persistence of memory and its relation to reality became one of the main themes of Last Year in Marienbad. Can we always trust our memories? Does the memory reflect events in the sequence in which they really happened, or does our vision of these events change over time under the influence of new feelings, faces, and sensations that inevitably enter life and overshadow the past, displacing it into the depths of the subconscious? Memories change shape and form. They merge into one and break like a mirror into smithereens, into countless fragments. They change sharply and painfully, like the sound of glass on asphalt, and slide smoothly one after another in an elusive sequence. Marienbad of last year is no different from this year, and who can say exactly what was promised and by whom? Have the assurances of love been forgotten, or have they never been spoken? And were there any plans for a meeting exactly in a year at all, which were not meant to come true, or was it only imagination? The film challenges the viewer with an endless array of answers, including interpretations of every cycle of ancient Greek mythology, the dark worlds of Kafka, the elegantly aloof tales of Borges, the manifestos of surrealism, symbolism, and other isms. But starting the game first, as the most mysterious of the film's character, remaining in the background, The Last Year at Marienbad always wins without giving a single answer, always having the last word, which can only be followed by the ellipses...
Are the viewers, following the advice of screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet, ready to immerse themselves in the screen world of Marienbad, opening the door to purely sensory perception? Such an approach will make it possible to appreciate the surreal mystique of the film, its versatility, the non-linear development of the action based on free movement in time and space, as well as the amazing openness of Last year... to any interpretation. The viewer becomes an "accomplice in crime", he can join the secrets of the film, offer his own interpretation and, thereby, come closer to understanding its essence. Very possible that someone will see only emptiness, raised to the level of complicated significance, and tastefully packaged in an elegant box of pretentiousness. Well, this is also one of the interpretations of the film, about which its creator Alain Resnais said that "Last year at Marienbad" does not make any sense, but inspires endless reflections. While working on it, Resnais reflected on such subjects as loneliness, uncertainty, ambiguity, and unconscious fear of repressed desires that tormented the heroes of the film and which the director embodied on the screen in hypnotic images. The illusory, deceptive, and indefinite world of the film is subject to its own internal rhythm and exists in symmetrical compositions, mirror reflections, and instant collisions of white and black colors, in a geometrically built garden in which only people cast shadows, but trees and bushes do not. The long camera movements through endless corridors and salons visually increase the size of the hotel, a full-fledged character of the film, making the building an endless and intricate labyrinth in which the characters circle like lost souls in purgatory. Their only hope of escaping the labyrinth is memory. Only memory can indicate the exit to the world of the living.
Memory and its irresistible power over us have been the subject of keen interest for Alain Resnais throughout his creative life, starting with the first feature film, Hiroshima Mon Amour. The persistence of memory and its relation to reality became one of the main themes of Last Year in Marienbad. Can we always trust our memories? Does the memory reflect events in the sequence in which they really happened, or does our vision of these events change over time under the influence of new feelings, faces, and sensations that inevitably enter life and overshadow the past, displacing it into the depths of the subconscious? Memories change shape and form. They merge into one and break like a mirror into smithereens, into countless fragments. They change sharply and painfully, like the sound of glass on asphalt, and slide smoothly one after another in an elusive sequence. Marienbad of last year is no different from this year, and who can say exactly what was promised and by whom? Have the assurances of love been forgotten, or have they never been spoken? And were there any plans for a meeting exactly in a year at all, which were not meant to come true, or was it only imagination? The film challenges the viewer with an endless array of answers, including interpretations of every cycle of ancient Greek mythology, the dark worlds of Kafka, the elegantly aloof tales of Borges, the manifestos of surrealism, symbolism, and other isms. But starting the game first, as the most mysterious of the film's character, remaining in the background, The Last Year at Marienbad always wins without giving a single answer, always having the last word, which can only be followed by the ellipses...