Deconstructing cinema much in the way Bresson wanted to do, but in a more grand fashion. It is akin to the Dadaist art movement of anti-art, breaking the rules and destroying the notion of what we perceive as true art. Perhaps not fully to that extent, but Resnais clearly experiments with the medium of cinema in a way majorly unaccepted, and ironically it becomes the focal point of where the film's greatness lies.

Last Year at Marienbad begins with repetitive and poetic narration, ominously filling the air of the long empty corridors and parlors it softly speaks of. In the first few opening scenes alone, it is apparent Resnais is ready to deliver something entirely unique to the world of…

“I have never stayed so long anywhere.”

In a mysterious and isolated baroque chateau, a handsome man approaches a beautiful woman and alludes to a romance they shared the year before, but the woman insists they have never met.

Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad methodically coalesces past and present in a profoundly disquieting, seductive meditation on the elusiveness of memory over time. Resnais employs a pronounced brand of surrealism that beautifully deconstructs the cinematic form. The gliding camerawork wanders and roams through airy hotel corridors and lush garden landscapes. Scenes, underscored by eerie organ music and breathy poetic narration, unfold as dreams and memories without visual distinction. All of this transpire within a circular narrative structure that deliberately trap…

Alienation: "a withdrawing or separation of a person or a person's affections from an object or position of former attachment," as the Merriam Webster dictionary defines it. The same source also defines the term "dream" as: a state of mind marked by abstraction or release from reality. Both terms' meanings carry an apt description that fits so perfectly well when talking about Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad, for only one viewing can boggle the mind that one won't even know where to begin when talking about the sort of wonder it creates. But I've already watched Last Year at Marienbad numerous times and I'm still left with that befuddling emotion although I know deep down that it truly is…

"You're like a phantom that's come for me."

societal isolation as the breakdown of the very fabric of reality. ambiguity is resnais' trump card here, and he capitalizes on the minds of those paying attention by unfolding a new path before you to try to unlock the mystery in every shot and even in the sound design (one scene of a character walking up the stairs is particularly revealing in this aspect).

from the absence of a definitive setting, names to the characters, and even a true sense of the reality of what we're seeing, Last Year at Marienbad is like playing one of cinemas most challenging games of mental tetherball while also not sacrificing the playfulness that’s ingrained in…

content note: rape & gaslighting

being gaslit is like being thrust into a hall of mirrors, full of the most baroque lies and constructions of alternate realities, ‘false doors, fake columns, painted perspectives, false exits’. you’re betrayed by every wall—a twisted price to pay for trying to protect your own. resnais turns the last half-hour of vertigo inside out, the better to reveal its byzantinely-twisted guts: a rapist who’s desperate to reconnect with his victim, who can’t understand why she wants nothing to do with him, that she only occasionally gives in to his fantasies in hopes he’ll stop. nothing’s his fault, everything’s the fault of others’ memories or even the system; even when presented with an easy victory in the…

***One of the best 150 films I have ever seen.***

The filmic style of Alain Resnais had the remarkable talent of completely staying away from the revolutionary cinematic movement denominated French New Wave and had the guts of literally playing with cinema and modifying its usual structural grammar. With Hiroshima mon Amour (1959), film that counted with the unparalleled brilliant contribution of acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Marguerite Duras, Resnais could offer a different perspective of a non-linear and poetical storytelling never seen in cinema before. His next true masterpiece called L'Année Dernière à Marienbad allowed him to perfect his style, not exactly resorting to surrealism in its purest form, but rather introducing a hypnotic cinematic subjectivity dependent on the viewer's…

My first film by Alain Resnais. Last Year At Marienbad, while maybe not the exact direct link between the two directors, feels like the middle step between Maya Deren and David Lynch to me. It's a film that does have a story to it, but what I will remember more about it is the incredible sense of mood and atmosphere it inspires from the very beginning all the way through the end. Last Year At Marienbad is the story of a man meeting a woman in some otherworldly fancy hotel that looks more like a palace than a hotel, and he insists that they've met before, but when she acts like she has no memory of such a meeting, he…

I could just as easily have rated Resnais' second feature film with one star, or two an d a half, because I see it as deserving any of those ratings. It's a puzzle piece that you don't have the information to solve, a romance that never occurred, or only happened in a dream. The characters are all phantoms, or they exist in the imagination of A, or maybe of X. There never was a "last year," or maybe last year was this year, and X is a lying seducer, simply toying with A because M always beats him at Nim. Maybe Nim is the point of the film and there is no secret to understanding it, and there is nothing…