Elegantly enigmatic and dreamlike, this work of essential cinema features exquisite cinematography and an exploration of narrative still revisited by filmmakers today.
Elegantly enigmatic and dreamlike, this work of essential cinema features exquisite cinematography and an exploration of narrative still revisited by filmmakers today.
A cinematic puzzle, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad is a radical exploration of the formal possibilities of film. Beautifully shot in Cinemascope by Sacha Vierny, the movie is a riddle of seduction, a mercurial enigma darting between a present and past which may not even exist, let alone converge. The film stars Giorgio Albertazzi as an unnamed sophisticate attempting to convince a similarly nameless woman (Delphine Seyrig) that they met and were romantically involved a year ago in the
same enormous, baroque European hotel. In the end, it hardly matters -- they're not characters so much as pawns anyway. Hypnotically dreamlike, Last Year at Marienbad is a surrealist parody of Hollywood melodrama, a high-fashion romance with a dark, alien underbelly. According to screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet, the movie is a pure construction, without a frame of reference outside of its own existence -- the lives of its characters begin when the lights go down, and conclude when they come back up. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi
To even talk of a story is nonsensical, since a central aesthetic of the film involves the effects of fantasy, time and subjective memory on human consciousness. Marienbad takes place in a heightened, sci-fi nightmare world where knowing, believing
The film's dreamlike cadences, frozen tableaux, and distilled surrealist poetry are too eerie, too terrifying even, to be shaken off as camp. For all its notoriety, this masterpiece among masterpieces has never really received its due.
Be prepared for an experience such as you've never had from watching a film when you sit down to look at Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, a truly extraordinary French film.
Profoundly mysterious and disturbing, a para-surrealist masterpiece whose nightmarish scenario appears to have been absorbed from Buñuel and Antonioni and transmitted onward to Greenaway.
an enigmatic mind-melt that sends characters and viewers alike on a chronology-confounding loop down labyrinthine corridors and up garden paths in pursuit of a (re)solution that, even after it has been found, remains elusive and ambiguous.
the elegant tracking shots amid the baroque architectural excesses that frame the film's lingering questions draw you into a world of mystery that seems to be ultimately understandable, yet constantly unravels at every turn
An intriguing, stylistic, but plodding picture concerning anonymous figures, one of which being an aggressive male trying convince a beautiful female that the two of them had an affair a year ago that day. The film has tons of style and gets tricky with the camera, especially near the conclusion, but this is literally
one of the longest movies I felt I have seen - and it is only 93 minutes long! Sure, the acting is good, and this is pretty good melodrama, but it is a film that refuses to tie up any loose ends, and as a result, feels disappointing. Ambiguous endings are great when done correctly, sadly this film misses out.
I saw this movie for a class, but I didn't watch the entire film because it's so slow and boring, but it is actually pretty atmospheric most of the time. Overall, it's okay, not great, but not bad either.
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