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Future-Past
By
Offer Eshel
The past is never dead;
it isn’t even past.
William Faulkner
This is the science fiction story,
told solely through still-life pictures, of a young boy who, on one bright Sunday
before the war, witnesses the face of a woman and the murder of a man. These
events take place on the jetty at
Switch to a different time,
different place – to
Among these chosen few is our
protagonist, the same boy that we encountered at the onset of the story, whose
memory has been imprinted with the brief haunting images of his childhood.
While on his journey into the past, this boy-turned-man, encounters and falls
in love with the woman whose face he remembered from
The short duration of the film (29
minutes), its circular structure, and the profound, yet simple literary tone of
the script, are reminiscent of Borges’ metaphysical parables.[1]
“La Jetee” presents a vision of a
post-apocalyptic
The ambiguity that is found in this film,
in relation to the value of imagination, reflects Marker’s own ambivalent
perspective of science fiction in general. Almost all of Marker’s films are
documentaries or news editorials, and this element is also present in “La
Jetee”.
Creating fiction is an act of
loneliness, and while on the surface producing a film is a group effort, the
loneliness of the writer (or scriptwriter) is replicated in the loneliness of
the director and editor. Loneliness emphasizes originality, the authenticity of
the person; and is thus the basis, tool, and background for fully knowing
humanity and its world. If it is possible to view a documentary (or news
editorial) as a dialogue between a man making a film (spontaneity), and a man
editing it (analytical reflection), then what kind of dialogue can exist in a
fictional film (such as “La Jetee”), where the story (screenplay) has been
conceived in advance? In the editing room, Marker chose to reduce the film to a
set of stills, in an attempt to return the story to the point at which it was
created (while retaining its entirety), to return it to the writer that
conceived it in his loneliness, to recapture the spontaneity. The film
re-emerges, not as a continuous motion picture, but rather as the fragmented
idea which first motivated its production as a blueprint for a film. By
abolishing motion, the illusion of immediacy, Marker has created a film in
which the present seems non-existent. “La Jetee’s” impact lies in the fact that
we feel the intensity of its absence. Most of his films depict aspects of the
struggle between oppressor and the oppressed. Marker examines the problems of
film and society from the perspective of time, both personal and historical –
past, present and future. The notion of a historico-political collective memory
is central in all of his documentaries, yet it is dealt with more subtly when
presented in relation to individual memory. In other words, he discusses
collective memory by presenting personal memory. During one of the film’s
scenes, the couple pause in front of a thick slice of a sawed-off tree trunk
with many rings. The protagonist points beyond this trunk and remarks to the
woman that he comes from over there, while she mentions the name of Hitchcock.[2]
The reference is unfamiliar to him, but recalls in the viewer a culturally
shared memory.
“La Jetee” presents the individual as a helpless victim struggling
against enormous historical and social developments, and yet it is the
individual memories that create and justify this world, and preserve these
notions that serve to define it. The exploration of the themes of time and
memory is achieved through the stratification of present and past, and also,
occasionally, of the future. In this way, Marker is able to present a
historical perspective of the way in which cultural, economical and political
conditions change within society, and to observe the enigmatic nature of the
individual as part of a collective human fate that is constructed from a
multitude of facts and fragments.
The scenery serves as a static
element to be found within human reality, and plays an important role in
creating a sense of time for humanity. Scenic stills enhance the connection
between the environment, and humanity’s presence and existence within it. The
past is recreated through the use of scenery and its relation to humankind.
Humanity, scenery, history, ideas, and impressions work together to create a
whole...“And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses had the look of flowers
that are looked at.”[3]
The ancient statues in the
underground corridors, the pre-war Parisian buildings, the rings of the sliced
tree trunk, the stuffed carcasses of the animals on display in the museum, all
exude a sense of presence; humankind's look into the past as it is captured by
the camera lens in the present.
Marker attempts to capture human
life in relation to its physical environment, and to demonstrate how the
environment is a decisive factor in the creation and design of civilization –
in the sense that it is the void in which time places itself. Marker presents a
concept of humankind in time-past, present and future. Humanity lives, and
gains immortality through its creations, which serve as proof for the existence
of time. The dialogue between present and past is presented by means of the
journey into the time-space of the protagonist’s soul.
One should not mistakenly sum up
this film strictly as an ideological manifest, “La Jetee” is also a tender and
beautiful love story that is conveyed by means of a serene, pastoral
atmosphere, the quiet harmony of a distant past, desolation, ruins, and the
effects of radiation.
“La Jetee” deals with time in the
same way that a conventional science fiction movie might, but in contrast to
the latter, it achieves the conquest of time not merely through
mechanical-technological means, but rather through the mental power of the
protagonist. Longing and passion for the beloved are the time traveller’s fuel
in his journey. This emphasis on love and its artistic realization are what
preserve the lyrical qualities and beauty of “La Jetee”.
Marker demonstrates his control in
creating atmosphere in every one of the stills that represent life in the past.
The composition of the stills focuses on the facial expressions and states of
mind of groups of people that are talking and playing. Fragments of parks,
buildings, and streets in which people live, are used to form a temporal
connection between space and human activity – selectively placing and
incorporating the use of facial expressions, animals, objects, buildings, and
scenic views reconstruct the time of the past.
Eventually the protagonist is
reunited with the people in his past, wandering the streets of
Marker relates the short length of
the human “day” in a morning scene that has followed a night of intimacy.
Sequences of stills that rapidly move in succession suggest sensuality and
tenderness. For one poignant, brief, moment the series of stills is suspended
and we see the woman blink, smile, and absorb the melody of singing birds rise
in an ecstatic crescendo. We are then sharply reverted back to the stills. At
this point in the film, Marker presents a change in the concept of time as it
was determined by the use of stills, to a time that fades away in the blink of
an eye – whereby he relates the fragility and elusiveness of human happiness.
Marker presents three distinct
categories of time:
1. Time
that is depicted in and defined by stills.
2. The
suggestion of timelessness as portrayed by the animals and the birds in the
museum.
3. Conventional
time that is depicted in the waking scene where the woman blinks.
This tri-partite representation
assists in imparting a feeling of distance, insecurity, and uncertainty with
regard to our perception of time. The implausibility of time and reality throws
itself at the viewer when a specific and central place in our memory, such as
The purpose of the journey into the
past, into the childhood, is to prepare for the more demanding journey into the
future. After encountering great obstacles he succeeds, and finds that planet
Earth has changed;
The manifold details and certainty
represented in the film, in relation to the different time modes mentioned
earlier, in essence, reflect the state of our knowledge in relation to our own
“times”.
When the protagonist escapes from
his captors of the present, into the past, the frames change in order to create
an atmosphere of anxiety and impending doom. A few brief shots of his encounter
with the scientists and others who are responsible for the experiment, their
severe and distant faces, are used to foreshadow the liquidation that they have
in store for him. While awaiting imminent death, his total isolation changes
the concept of time that the film had hitherto known. He waits, and his
anticipation seems to suspend time and to create a vacuum in which his new
predicament is felt dramatically. This impression of vacuum is enhanced when
the men of the future appear in their abstract space and invite him to join
them. At this point, he is disengaged from his underground present reality; he
refuses the future world and asks to be returned to his past. The suspension of
time abruptly ends when he finds himself at the jetty of
The final moments of the film create
a complex scheme of the various temporal categories. From a psychological and
intellectual perspective, we are aware of the fact that he has returned to his
past, yet this past contains his future which is fulfilled by him in the
present. Within these various temporal categories, there is also the factual
time (when he runs toward the woman), which depicts the protagonist in a series
of quickly changing pictures, and which also, at certain points, creates the
feeling of conventional cinematic motion. With the death of the protagonist,
the conception of time changes once more, as this dramatic moment is seen
through the eyes of the child, and once again, we are whisked back to the very
same Sunday morning when it all began.
Presenting time through the use of
stills may be interpreted as a challenge against one’s common sense, since time
for us is primarily motion – the experience that is present in action. The
static depiction of all that is presented in the still frames is paradoxically
the very same element that emphasizes the vividness, vitality, and potentiality
of motion, as if at any moment they may begin to move. The stereoscopic
spectacles, the electrodes, the weird eye patches, the heartbeats, the
whispering, and the agonized face of the protagonist – all culminate in the
intensity of action that takes place in the specific categories of time. Life
is recorded in moments of anxious anticipation, uncertainty, suffering, or
momentary happiness. In certain cases, the intensity and value of these
emotions is determined by the duration of time that the still is given, though
we are only aware of the meaning and significance of the action and of the
“real” duration of time that has transpired.
The sequence in which the
protagonist meets with the woman is an especially poignant example of the
homogenous nature of the content and form of the film. The general effect of
the time-flow in these scenes is determined by the type of action that is
presented. By using a balanced composition of stills, fade-ins and fade-outs,
the protagonists strolling in the park are always perceived in a way that
implies temporal continuity. This, in turn, amplifies the “reality” of their
romance and the authenticity of the drama in the film. The museum scene is
another interesting example of the association between human time as a product
of human activity, in which their visit to the museum alludes to the static
nature of universal time. This scene is composed of a series of stills that
evoke a strong sense of time. The museum is the keeper of eternal time as
opposed to the transience of human time and the happiness of the couple. Frames
of a gigantic reptilian creature from the ancient past, another of panthers,
(life, intensity) their lines suggesting motion even in stills, are used to
create an impression of time-motion, which is intensified with the close-up of
pumas as it dissolves into frames of zebras, giraffes, and a flock of birds. In
order to emphasize and summarize this association, we are presented with long
duration frames of the protagonists in relation to the exhibit. Since both
human beings are themselves static in this wild kingdom, they too, for a brief
moment, become part of this phenomenon of timeless life.
There is a connection between the
various levels of time and the activities taking place in the underground
laboratory. The actions of the scientists occur concomitantly to the
physiological time of the protagonist’s body, while his mental time flows on an
all-together different level. The scientists’ time is expressed by frames of
their anxious faces, the indecipherable whispering voices, and pictures of them
alongside the protagonist. The physiological time of the protagonist is related
through frames of his contorted, suffering body, and the sound of his
heartbeat, while his mental time is totally separate from these two bodily
manifestations, and is created by the representation of a completely different
world.
The frames also convey a documentary
message of a past – these are people who once existed and now are dead. This
differs from the illusion of motion, which creates a sense of present, of a
comforting immediacy – as if these people are not really dead. In addition, a
sense of page turning (in the present) in a photo-album (depicting the past)
relates to the theme of memory. The attempt to elude time and the use of
childhood memory to find the answer to existential angst and to unattainable
happiness is a very suggestive cinematic style. The vulnerability of humankind
versus the forces of the universe, and the irreversibility of history, is
presented frame by frame and leads to the conclusion that the love of a man and
a woman separated by time and space is but an unreal and timeless adventure of
the soul; although the longing for love is that which made it possible for the
protagonist to recapture the past, if only for a moment. The protagonist
realizes that he is unable to reject the future, since the future is our own
death, which we create with every breath. The stills create this future for
him, from the beginning of the film, when the young child sees the dead man –
the inevitable turn of fate.
According to Heidegger,[4]
death has been present since the beginning of existence, the essence of which
is interwoven in its dependence upon the presence of death. We are aware of
this presence, but there is no possibility to experience our own death in such
a way that would allow us to reflect upon it. Our sole experience of death is a
vicarious one, through the death of others. This alienation, between the
awareness of death and humanity, is enhanced as a result of the anxiety that
stems from the fear of non-existence. The human willingness to accept the
awareness of the possibility of death as a personal experience is very limited.
Facing death presents humankind with the possibility of attaining the most
complete self-realization, but at the same time, it exposes the experienced
reality as partial, incomplete, dependent on the existence of humanity, and
constantly on the brink of imminent destruction. This confrontation against the
terror of death does not itself provide content or meaning, because death’s essence
is void and nothingness. The value of this realization in the possibility of
death and in its terror lies in death’s capacity to sever humankind's
connection to normative frames of reference and makes it possible for a person
to realize their own claim to be an individual.[5]
Marker emphasizes the power of the
past over the present, the space that it occupies in the mental life that is
defined as the present. Human beings are creatures of time: awareness of time
is that which determines our relation to one another and to the universe.
Perhaps Chris Marker’s conception of time as presented in “La Jetee” can best
be summed up by the following lines by T.S. Elliot:
“time present and time past / are both perhaps
present in time future / and time future contained past.”[6]
[1] Borges, J.L. (1962). Ficciones.
[2] For Marker analysis of
Hitchcock’ Vertigo, see A Free Replay. Positif 400, June 1994,
79-84
[3] Eliot, T.S. (1958). Four
Quartets (Burnt Norton).
[4] Heidegger, M. (1956). Existence
and Being.
[5] Sartre, J.P. (1965). The
Philosophy of Existentialism.
[6] Eliot, T.S. (1958). Four
Quartets (Burnt Norton).