(Text/Ghost Feet Seven)
"Last year in Marionbad" belongs to this type of film. It has been mentioned countlessly, praised, and enshrined in the altar. It can't avoid being disdainful, neglected, and shelved. This is the inevitable fate of works that transcend the times, but fortunately, great works do not exist to be understood. They do not want to please a few audiences in the dark theater. What they have to do is to subvert and rewrite. The rules of the world.
The meaning of memory In
Alan Rene’s director’s resume, "Last year in Marion Bard" occupies a landmark and important position. As his most well-known works, "Last Year and Marion Bard" and "Love in Hiroshima" "In the era when the new wave swept the world, it almost appeared before the audience in a posture like falling from the sky, and it also added a fire to the great changes in the world's movies. In 1961, "Last year in Marion Bard" won the Golden Lion Award for Best Picture at the Venice Film Festival (this is the only time Alan Renai won the highest award in three major film festivals), marking Alan Renai’s An excellent documentary director has embarked on the path of avant-garde director. Such changes have never stopped in Alan Renai’s entire career as a director, from documentaries to experimental avant-garde works to the ease of use of different art forms. The different forms of works at different stages are so different, it seems that he is never tired, never dissatisfied with constantly trying different possibilities. It is precisely because of this that Alan Renai probably belongs to the kind of director who is difficult to recognize from the visual and audio. His characteristics have never been clearly reflected in the lens, but more often in cooperation with different screenwriters. During the process, Alan Renai injected his own philosophical concepts and life experience into different stories. His integration became a cultural rather than formal impact, which made Alan Renai’s film Always under the package of different outerwear, always full of changes and surprises.
This high reliance on literature is presented as an almost obscure expression in Allen Renai’s films, just as the endless chattering in "Last year in Marienbad", French intellectuals The philosophical habits and Lei Nai's own aristocratic temperament form the biggest feature of the film. But as Jean Renoir said, “Alan Renai wants to tell only one truth with all the movies in his life”. For filmmakers like Alan Renai, the real world is, to a certain extent, only the shadow of thought, just an accidental example of the barrenness of the sands of the Ganges. The "one truth" that Lei Nai has always been keen to express in the film is exactly what he presented and explored in "Last year in Marionbad", about the relationship between too much and the present.
This highly metaphysical proposition runs through Alan Renai’s entire creative career. In fact, it has already started from the previous documentary "Night and Fog". In "Last year in Marionbad", the entangled relationship between the past and the present is even greater. It has risen to the height of almost pure philosophy. The constant reminiscence and pull between Mr. X and Ms. A finally confuse the memories with the present. The two "last year" and "Marionbad" originally clearly marked the concept of time and space. As the film progresses, it loses its effect. Whether it was in Marienbad or elsewhere last year or this year, not only the characters in the story are indistinguishable, but the audience also loses the standard of judgment (or the patience to judge) . The process of Alan Renai’s presentation is extremely challenging. For X and A, the only thing that maintains their relationship is what X said in the period of time in Marienbad last year, A’s denial and X’s efforts. The proofs just reflect a basic fact that the past did not exist, and even if it exists, it cannot be proved. Or in other words, all the past can be rewritten—just as X did, describing over and over again, every detail, every sentence, every action. The so-called past is just an impression in our minds, so whoever writes it is the same. All of A's impressions of last year and Marienbad are constructed a little bit by X's "stalker" in the film. As for the audience, it was what A said to X at the end of the film and finally chose to believe it. This ending caused us to completely distrust the past. This is a very interesting result, because the resolution of the contradiction-X finally persuaded A from the story that happened last year and decided to leave together-originally had a satisfying effect, but in "Last year in Marienbad" Among them, the opposite effect was completely achieved. Here, Alan Renai's highly skeptical attitude towards past events was finally conveyed to the audience, so that it made us more confused after watching the film than before. Ray Nai was not here to solve our doubts, but to guide us to a deeper place to question.
Contrary to the attitude towards the past, Alan Renai obviously pays more attention to it, at least he is more willing to devote more space to show the present. The way in which "Last year in Marienbad" connects the past and the present is not simple. In the sense of time, the linear causal connection, because of the uncertainty of the past in X, it has lost its traditional meaning for reality, and reality itself has become an isolated existence without a head and a tail. All the characters in the film have no background, no background, no history, even no name or identity. In this luxurious mansion, all people play aimlessly and without motivation. For X, when he defines the past from reality, he completely breaks the relationship between the past and the present in the linear time relationship. It can be said that in the film, the present, the meaningless blank present, becomes the origin of everything. There is even the present before the past. As Alan Renai said, "The present and the past coexist, but the past should not only exist in the flashback", "Last year in Marionbad" thoroughly implemented Renai's self-narration, and the present and the past are juxtaposed The film’s attempt to destroy the linear time relationship from a philosophical point of view, being mixed and intermingled, has become one of the important turning points of world cinema, just like the innovation brought about by Godard’s destruction of this relationship in form in "Exhausted".
The Maze of the Labyrinth’s
exploration of the obscure forms of expression of philosophical propositions was brought to the extreme in "Last year in Marienbad". The various mental states of memory, time, imagination, and fabrication are directly presented on the screen. Ji Qu Jiao Ya turned into a formal creation. "Last year in Marion Budd" constructed a labyrinth-a labyrinth of stories and a labyrinth of forms. Ray Nai is like an enthusiastic tour guide, not guiding us to find an exit. But just wandering in the maze as much as possible.
This endless sense of wandering is directly displayed on the film's lens. The smoothly moving lens shuttles back and forth between luxuriously furnished rooms like elegant dance steps, but is as aimless as a lost person. The beginning of the film is accompanied by the repeated whispers of X. An almost 90-degree overhead shot showing the detailed patterns and decorations on the ceiling and columns, chandeliers, porches, and ornate inner walls. The film has constructed such a pattern from the beginning. The space is gorgeous and luxurious, and the details are rich, but it is empty, because in the first 5 minutes of the shot, apart from the surrounding environment displayed as a set, there are no people and no moving objects. What we see in the lens is more like an abandoned big house, and the lens shot up from the back exacerbates this sense of emptiness. The way that Lei Nai unfolds the story environment is very unique. He goes directly into the detailed description and directly cuts into the inner activities. This makes us unable to grasp the direction of the story from the beginning. What's more, Lei Nai has not forgotten to use the small lens on the camera. Skills to continue to destroy our movie-watching habits. In the next shot, a waiter-like person walked in the depths of the corridor, but before he had reached a distance that we could recognize, the shot suddenly ended. The film here awakens the audience's conditioned reflex of the traditional narrative habits, but quickly breaks it. The same examples continue to appear in the next few shots. In the room where the drama was staged, we first saw the exquisitely dressed men and women of the upper class who were not moving like sculptures. The camera turned around. We saw the drama being played on the stage. The camera slowly advanced towards the heroine, but finally passed the woman. The protagonist, moved to her shadow projected on the set, but suddenly stopped in the middle, and the audience's attention was teased again. This subtle provocation means that there is no special significance in this film. Ray Nai challenged our viewing habits just to warm up the whole film for bolder attempts in structure and narrative. We can almost see that as the film progresses, this challenge gradually shows its true colors. Throughout the narrative process of the film, the lens has always played the role of using negativity to destroy our habitual thinking. Alan Renai uses such a mirror language system that always points to uncertainty to express this very directly. The core feature of the story is the "ambiguity" repeatedly mentioned by critics. The headless and tailless story that Lei Nai constructed on the film story, and the independence that he kept from the story in the mirror operation has always entrapped the audience in the mist of chaos. He not only puts himself in uncertainty. Things (such as the future of X and A) into the discussion box In the frame, it also gives ambiguity to the things that are true and infallible in the usual concepts. Even with the development of the film, we have unconsciously given up the doubts we had at the beginning and the efforts to sort out the ins and outs, and had to accept it. This unexplainable state. Renai’s thoughts expressed in the film are somewhat similar to Antonioni. Under an absurd premise, he spied on us and the world’s biggest weakness, and questioned our existence that we least dare to question. Reasonable in the world.
It is very laborious to do such a theoretical interpretation of "Last year in Marienbad", and Alan Renai’s film does not form a force that compulsively pursues a metaphysical meaning. In this film, Renai The tricks in the external form, even if we don't interpret the deep meaning behind them, are also quite interesting. For example, X describes to A how they met and chatted in Marienbad last year, discussing a statue of an ancient Greek figure by the pool, and then X talked about another statue and reached out to invite A to "please follow me", and then The scene is edited to "now". On the stairs in the mansion, X reaches out and invites A. This is a customary action editing, but at the same time the reverse effect on the composition and the change of scene distinguish the difference at the same time. The splicing method of the two shots here forms a contrast and connection effect different from the general editing. He thoroughly implemented his requirements and style for the film’s form to every corner. It is precisely because of this that the presentation of "Last year in Marienbad" is highly complete. The labyrinth built by the film is just like that luxurious mansion. Stately, without loopholes, all dreams and fantasies are elegant and smooth. It is in this inadvertent natural movement that the film finally refreshed our initial experience of the concept of film time and space and formulated new expression rules.
The literary film
"Last year in Marion Bard" is usually mentioned together with "Hiroshima Love" as Alan Renai's early masterpiece and the most well-known work, but at the same time, "Last year in Marion Bard" Behind the creation of ", there is another person who has no less influence on the film than the director. This is the screenwriter Alan Rob-Grillet.
Lei Nai’s high dependence on literary texts became him, as well as the important difference between the entire Left Bank school and the improvisational works of the film manual school, from the novel of "Hiroshima Love" from Duras to the 2012 new work "The Treasure Blade" What You Have Seen Isn’t What You See" is adapted from a dramatic work. The close cooperation between Lei Nai and the playwright makes him somewhat more like the “high-quality movie” style criticized by the manualists. It is precisely because of this that, as a typical French intellectual, Alan Renai’s characteristics and aristocratic temperament pass through a group of "old people" like him (Renai and Grillet were born in 1922, Duras was born in 1916, more than the New Wave The main generals are about ten years older) together, using traditional art as the basis, rather than the new form of "making something out of nothing", to complete another possibility for the innovation of film art. Alan Grillet and Margaret Duras, two prominent figures in the literary world, after entering the film industry and cooperating with Alan Renai, they also took the position of film directors. The tradition of French film adaptation of literary works-regardless of the praise or criticism of it-it is through this tortuous way that it has been continued.
"Last year in Marienbad" is still a literary film in this sense, and what Griyer presents in the script is almost all of the film. This is not to deny Alan Ray It’s the contribution to the film, but just as Grillet himself said, the coincidence between him and Renai in the concept of the film made the movie script he submitted to Renai hardly changed too much, and the two of them were very careful about the details. The revision of the movie went so smoothly that when Grillet returned to France from Turkey to see the film "Last year in Marienbad" was completed, he thought that he wanted to express something appropriately. Of course, Griet’s politeness in the foreword of the script and his high degree of conformity with Renai’s concept contains considerable self-humility, but what still cannot be ignored is that it is Alan Renai’s high degree of literary texts. Paying attention to it has enabled Grillet's first film script to be fully presented on the screen, and this film has since become a classic in film history. From this perspective, Alan Renai is more like an intermediary. He has successfully grafted different art categories into film art. His innovation and transformation of film techniques provide for the entry and play of different artistic styles. For this huge new space, Alan Renai made great contributions to this point.
Alan Renai, like all the masters of the palace, has been labeled countless by countless people, and is regarded as the standard bearer and leader of an aesthetic revolution. But at the same time, Lei Nai is indeed complicated and difficult to define precisely. Few directors of that era would be like him. He was at the core of the radical trend but always remained elegant and quiet, always unhurried and slow. He was not like a manual. Pie criticized "high-quality movies" so fiercely, and just said lightly, "I just don't make such movies." Lu Fu is soft, sensitive, and childish, and Renai is just as he himself appears in front of people, always neat and clean hair, black suit, red shirt, and a pair of sunglasses. When he entered his old age and looked back on his pioneering era, he said, "It was an era of eagerness to escape and seeking to escape. The only thing I can do is not to escape, and not to let the movie become a piece of cloth to cover the eyes. "It's not just people's introspection and reflection in their twilight years, Ray Nai loves movies and art, but he never deceives himself in the name of movies. After reading Renai's calmness and simplicity, perhaps we can understand why others can make movies one after another after their old age, and why they can produce such great and amazing works.
Back in 1961, when "Last year in Marion Bar" was released, American film critics wrote: "Renai is the Joyce of the film industry, and his movie is "Finnegan's Watch" in the movie. Now, the 92-year-old Renai passed away. Fortunately, there are movies to guard him. Perhaps as Joyce wrote, Alan Renai’s passion and perseverance for art films will also follow the aroma of whiskey. And finally awakened.
(Originally published in "Watching Movies" under May 2014)
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