You don’t need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, simply wait. Don’t even wait. Be quite still and solitary.

- Franz Kafka

You'd think that with no plot or character development, or rather; a weak narrative structure and a poorly delineated character; that The Man Who Sleeps wouldn't be such a good film. The original source; the 1967 novel by Georges Perec didn't even cause much of a stir and neither did this 1974 adaption that was directed by a lesser known man by the name of Bernard Queysanne. Ironically, even with all that I've stated holding it back, it's the opposite that holds true in that it is actually quite a…

The Man Who Sleeps is a film dealing with existential depression and nihilistic alienation as a man, rejecting all but the bare minimum interaction with the world around him, sinks into a world of isolation and automaton-like repetition. Directed by Bernard Queysanne and based on the novel by Georges Perec (who also adapted his own book for the screen), The Man Who Sleeps is devoid of dialogue bar the diary-like narration of a female that contradicts and clarifies the slow, sisyphean events on screen. From the description it is easy to expect a cold and distant film that engages thanks to its technical merits yet that is not the case, it is a film that challenges its audience and gradually,…

There was an apathetic apocalypse today, or maybe it was yesterday, I don't know. It went like this: a man one day decides to be indifferent about the world. He played intricate seldomly-won solitare with his shadows and tried to not let time into his room. Time played tricks by knocking all around his walls, checking for hollow crevices, seeping through forgotten fractures, whispering malevolent things to the ghosts in the floorboards, perpetually returning to his door to offer a new alluring deal. Time bided its time by tearing apart empires and homes and the dreams of men. It came with no warning and wanted no reprieve. Being apathetic had never been so exhausting. But by the time the first…

Solitary states via the vessel of surrealist structuralism; a dizzying, maddening film building upon an ever-growing sense of chaotic alienation and intense isolation, until even silence as well is eventually overwhelmed by the claustrophobia of having to function and blend and move adaptively amongst all of the movement surrounding you. Until the voice within your head that echoes over all of the extraneous voices you're meant to hear and know, pushes you further and further down, toward a space in which solace cannot be found even in the landscape -- not even in a sense of place, because that sense of place would only envelop you and pull you a greater distance from a notion of self-identity. And so you're…

With the ending of the movie (The Man Who Sleeps), I collapsed in tears while saying, "Thank you! Thank you!", not because the film is revolutionary, dazzling, hypnotising, great, and extremely beautiful, because it is all that and much more, but rather because it is a shrine for every lonely person, for everyone who suffers from this sickness we call isolation, sanctifying sorrow, boredom, and fatigue, like a broken mirror in which you see uneven reflections of your face, this film is a distorted reflection of this reality or perhaps a reflection of a distorted reality, it is my whole being placed on a tape, my embodied thoughts, the ugliest periods of my life in the most beautiful image possible,…

Here's my thought process while watching:
1-Well shot
2-Kinda reminds me of "Je ,tu ,il ,Elle" the character that chooses staying in his/her room isolated and indifferent to the rest of the world. No dialogue ,only a female voice over. The narrator says things before or after they happens . Which adds to the unique way both films play with time.
3-It is male "Je ,tu ,il ,Elle"
4-Pauses movie to see when both movies were made. Did France just make the same movie twice in the SAME YEAR?
5-Stylistic differences appear more ,this one seems like a much better film but it made me appreciate "Je ,Tu ,Il ,Elle" more.
6-This movie is exhausting and kinda painful to watch.…

anos atrás, eu vi esse filme em um dia bem ruim, numa fase dolorosa da vida e me vi absolutamente representado por tudo que a narradora diz aqui. parecia que até que ela estava falando de mim. e eu não estava nem um pouco preparado para isso.
achei que quando fosse rever, eu conseguiria encarar ele melhor por que eu imaginava que estaria bem e mais saudável. que engano. quase não consegui terminar de ver dessa vez justamente por não saber lidar com a força que esse roteiro carrega - que diz tanto sobre mim,  que verbaliza todo o meu vazio e dor que nunca consegui explicar para os outros. e também por causa do cenário frio e escuro que…