Storybooks with happy endings are for children. Adults know that stories keep on unfolding, repeating, turning back on themselves, on and on until that end that no story can evade.
~ Roger Ebert writing about Last Year at Marienbad in 1999
Just recently I heard Peter Cowie refer to Last Year at Marienbad in an interview I was watching related to Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence due to Bergman’s shooting of long corridors in that film. Another film I thought of while watching Criterion’s newly released Blu-ray of Marienbad was Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, only to hear Ginette Vincendeau reference Kubrick’s classic in her 23-minute conversation on Marienbad in the supplemental material. Dave Kehr points out at The New York Times, Kubrick also paid the film another homage by dropping “a spaceman down into one of the baroque bedchambers of Marienbad at the end of 2001.” Read most any opinion of director Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad and people will mention how it is often imitated and parodied, but duplicated is something that would prove to be quite the task.
This was my first time seeing Last Year at Marienbad and it is actually my first time seeing anything from Resnais despite the fact his Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and Night and Fog (1955) are said to be quite spectacular. So I’m not sure if either of those films prepare you for the mystery that is Marienbad, but to say this film is as simple as its plot would get you laughed out of most any art house.
Speaking of which, this is an art house movie through-and-through. As a matter of fact, I would almost say Last Year at Marienbad is more a work of art than it is a movie, and as such it fits quite nicely into the category of experimental film as it takes a most nontraditional approach to its material while toying with your expectations from the very outset leaving you with a myriad of conclusions once the screen goes black.
The opening of the film reminds me very much of Lars von Trier’s Europa as a nameless voiceover is heard as we tour long baroque corridors of a nameless chateau. We later find the voice we have been listening to is of a man (Giorgio Albertazzi credited as X) who has returned to this chateau in search of a woman (Delphine Seyrig credited as A). X claims he and A had arranged a meeting at this very chateau a year prior and at this time she promised she would leave her companion (Sacha Pitoeff credited as M) for X. A claims to remember none of this and the rest of the film is spent following X’s attempts at refreshing her memory while M appears to be none-the-wiser, but appearances can be deceiving.
The story sounds simple and straightforward, but Resnais and screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet aren’t satisfied telling a straightforward story. For the duration of the entire film we are witness to visions from the past, present and future, and occasionally all three featured in the same scene. A character could turn around and find themselves in an entirely different room and turn back again only to carry on the conversation they were previously engaged in. It’s confusing for certain, but not so much so that you get annoyed, but enough to keep you guessing the entire way.
Never once in the film are you given a clear cut answer as to whether X and A actually met a year earlier and if they did the possibility of X taking her by force and potentially raping her lingers in the air even though Resnais says in an included audio interview, “The idea of a rape didn’t interest me at all,” but Robbe-Grillet had fully intended for that aspect to be explored making for one of the only real changes Resnais made to his detailed screenplay. No matter, if he intended it or not I see it in there all while Resnais holds strong saying, “For me, it’s a film about persuasion, conquest, an encounter. To me, it was a simple love story, so I tried to express the emotion of love, precisely the opposite of the idea of a rape.” So be it.
After listening to Resnais’s 33-minute audio interview as well as exploring the included 23-minute interview with the previously mentioned film scholar Ginette Vincendeau as she talks about the mysteries of the film and the 33-minute documentary on the making of the film, I came away thinking this is one of those films in which the audience may be seeing more than is actually there.
I remember my literature courses back in school and always thinking if the authors we were studying actually intended their readers to reach the conclusions literary scholars came to. There we were, examining every word of text from an author long since dead and deciphering his/her message with very little to back up what we were assuming. Is it possible Resnais and Robbe-Grillet’s tightly choreographed and twisted narrative could actually boil down to a simple love story? I guess it is possible, but where is the fun in that and if so what’s with all the deception?
As to the mysteries explored by film scholars and cinephiles over the years Resnais says, “I don’t know how the film is interpreted, but I know the mindset with which we made it.” Perhaps that’s the case, but after watching the included trailers for the film I don’t believe Resnais ever intended for the audience to concern themselves with his mindset. After all, it says we are to be coauthors of the film:
For the first time you will be the coauthor of a film based on your sensibilities, your personality, your mood, your own past. You’ll decide if this image, or this one is lying or telling the truth…
And that’s where Last Year at Marienbad takes you and it does so with beautiful black-and-white widescreen cinematography featuring Albertazzi as X looking like the seasoned professional, Seyrig as A looking like something fresh out of the pages of a Coco Chanel promo and Pitoeff as M delivering a gaunt and somewhat nefarious turn as the anonymous man in A’s life.
Last Year at Marienbad twists and turns leaving the audience to decide between what’s real or imaginary; what’s past or present; what’s a lie and what’s the truth? One could even make a case saying this is a ghost story with the suggestion of murder and then there’s always the frightening possibility of rape, which would certainly explain A’s amnesia and her subsequent decisions.
This is not a film for everyone and I will only suggest it to those of you that enjoy looking deeper into a film, beyond the surface level and have the patience to stick with a style of storytelling that is far from traditional. At no point does Marienbad spell things out for you and it never intends to, which is the reason I believe its confusion is regarded as a masterpiece of storytelling rather than pointless drivel, even though it does have its detractors. One such noted detractor is the iconic critic Pauline Kael who called it “aimless, high-style moral turpitude passing itself off as the universal human condition.” Then again, Kael disliked Antonioni’s La Notte, Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Marienbad, all three of which she took to task in an essay in “I Lost It at the Movies,” a book I have not yet read but have suddenly found an undying need to pick it up since I enjoy all three of those films and am interested in reading the contrary.
Along with all I have mentioned, Marienbad includes two short film documentaries from Resnais as well as a 44-page booklet containing three separate essays. The only thing this collection doesn’t contain is a scene-by-scene breakdown of the film featured by Script Girl Sylvette Baudrot in the making-of documentary noting the time in which each scene takes place in order to make sure the actors were wearing the correct costumes. I’m not sure if this is available anywhere even though I know the script itself (which is amazing as you will see) is available for purchase, but it would be a great item to have on hand while watching the film.
Overall, I enjoyed this movie and the short time I spent studying it immensely, but at the same time it’s not for everyone. Criterion has put together an impressive package for those interested and may even be able to win over even the most skeptical of film watchers.
