Synopsis
In a huge, old-fashioned luxury hotel a stranger tries to persuade a married woman to run away with him, but it seems she hardly remembers the affair they may have had (or not?) last year at Marienbad.
Last Year at Marienbad
1961 ‘L'Année dernière à Marienbad’ Directed by Alain Resnais
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Alternative Titles
Last Year in Marienbad, 지난해 마리앙바드에서, El año pasado en Marienbad, Ano Passado em Marienbad, Loni v Marienbadu
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bro u think u had this meaningful ~before sunrise~ moment last year at marienbad but she don't remember u...let it go
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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…
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“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 camera wanders and roams through airy hotel corridors and lush garden landscapes. Scenes are paired with eerie organ music and breathy poetic narration, unfolding as dreams or memories without visual distinction. Transpiring within a circular narrative structure, the film deliberately traps its…
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the original temporal pincer movement. an act of emotional explanation and discovery unfolding simultaneously in what's ultimately a work of obsessive fixation on form and architecture, of subjective memory/fantasy that has the ability to disrupt our immutable understanding of (cinematic) time and space and twist it based on feeling.
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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…
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Last Year at Marienbad is a confounding mirage where time is irrelevant, and only love remains. If we say Chris Nolan creates time-bending universe for the mind, then director Alain Resnais must have been doing exactly the same for the soul.
Last Year at Marienbad has one of the most confusing plots in the movie history, due to its heavy use of stream of consciousness and symbolism. At face value, it's a slow-burn centered on two lovers reuniting in a hotel and reminiscing over a past encounter one year ago. Yet what truly put a magical glow over Last Year at Marienbad is the heavy ambiguity throughout, amplified by confusing dialogues, an almost dreamlike and absurdist atmosphere, and a breathtakingly…
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Shout out to the person in my screening that kept sighing heavily and saying, “I don’t get it.”
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"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…