LOVE: Last Year At Marienbad
What better way to start the LoveList than with this milestone in cinematic history. Last Year At Marienbad, which was released in 1961, tells the story of a man and a woman meeting at a breathtakingly pompous chateau. While the man claims that they had both met one year prior and agreed to meet here again this year, the woman denies all knowledge of that. As the story develops we are taken to real or perhaps imagined events, past and present. The film abandons the timeline as an absolute factor in the narrative much like David Lynch did in Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire and refuses to resolve all the questions it raises. Gradually the uncertainty of the woman grows as to whether they perhaps had met before, started an affair that she felt unable to continue and agreed to meet again when she would be free. As the viewer we are refused to bird’s eye view of classical story telling, but find ourselves sharing her confusion and, in a sense, become perhaps part of the story.
The cinematography and the aesthetics of Last Year At Marienbad are of such beauty and unlike anything seen before, that homages can be found all over popular culture, from Blur’s video to ‘To The End’ to a recent Karl Lagerfeld Collection for Chanel.
The film has been criticised as being overly intellectual, but for me it is quite the opposite: for me the best way to watch it is to switch off the mind and just let it be.
It’s a real treat and if you haven’t seen it yet, catch it at the Bfi Southbank in London from the 8th July.
