Last Year At Marienbad (1961)-Michael Tenzer
Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
By Michael Tenzer
I don’t recall many films that would make me want to staple my eyes lids closed, fill my ears with cement, and schedule a lobotomy. However, Last Year at Marienbad is -the- grotesque exception to the rule. This is possibly one of the worst films I’ve ever bore witness to. It isn’t redeemable in any sort of fashion. It isn’t bad-good. It isn’t avant-good. It isn’t anything at all.
The film takes place at a chateau where there is a high society gathering. There is a man who approaches a woman and asks her if they had met last year and if they had planned on running away together. Another man comes in – the supposed husband of the woman – and the conversation awkwardly ends. That is about as concrete a plot as this film allows.
The rest of Last Year at Marienbad is nothing but pain and tedium. There are sequences where the camera takes long tracking shots down various corridors of the austere manor, while a narrator spouts out vague observations on the architecture and the “emptiness” of the place. He becomes particularly fixated on the statues and how lifeless they are. If that isn’t a flagrant, slap-in-your-face metaphor, then I don’t know what is. It isn’t as if the themes are buried deep in this film. These affluent people are devoid of real emotions and genuine thoughts – as in, they are lifeless and cold like statues – as in, a trite, self-indulgent social critique.
There are several repeated scenes and camera movements that can be construed as the disjointed memory of the couple. However, this technique is trivialized by its execution. I honestly laughed out loud when there was not one, but three shots of the camera moving swiftly toward the balcony leading out to the courtyard. The shot just looked incredibly silly, because the rest of Last Year at Marienbad is such a plodding affair, that such a quick movement looks awkward and cartoonish. It was made even sillier by the fact the same shot occurs twice more over the course of the film.
The characters and dialogue follow suit. “Didn’t we meet last year at Marienbad? Didn’t you say you would leave your husband and we would run away together?” says the man to the woman. The woman only replies with “no’s” and equally crass responses. It’s as if there is an effort to cram some kind of narrative relevance into an aesthetical nightmare, just for the sake of it appearing to mean more then it actually does. The dialogue is repeated and repeated, with slight variations as the film goes on. I suppose this is the point where you get the –revelation- that Last Year at Marienbad has somehow transformed, and even transformed you, in such an “engaging” way.
The worst thing about the music is that it was ever created. The dissonant, grinding moan of a church organ is playing through almost the entire film. The intention of this, of course, would be to disorient the viewer and force them into a heavy delirium. In that way, they might be intrigued by its supposed aesthetical brooding and it’s persistence to marry the film together. Yet, it just doesn’t do this. Is the music supposed to represent the man and the woman’s strained relationship? Is it supposed to accent the meaningless, pedantic lifestyles of the people at the chateau? Is it just there for the sake of having it?
I honestly don’t care, either way, because watching and listening to the film –made- me not care. I imagine that when you go to hell, this is the film that lucifer makes you watch for all eternity while he stops it every ten minutes to emphasize just how good it is and how important it was to cinema history. And of course he has the sheet music and a towering, warped organ to play it on.
After viewing it, I read that the running time of Last Year at Marienbad was only 94 minutes. 94 minutes. An hour and half. That’s rather funny, because it felt more like a decade.
Copyright C. 2008 Michael Tenzer