Last Year at Marienbad is a film structured around themes and visuals more than plot. I had some discomfort with how rigid and formal the characters were. I found it interesting that all of the characters used vous instead of tu, which indicates a high level of politeness. However, since the characters lacked depth and development, it seemed fitting that they were so polite. I really like some of the camera techniques though. In one of the first scenes where it is revealed that 'M' might have a relationship with 'A', the camera reflects this perfectly by having 'X' sitting on the left side of the screen, 'M' and 'A' on the right side, and a chair in between them. Costumes also played an interesting role in the film. Since it was black and white, the characters were wearing either dark clothing or light clothing. It seemed like at moments in which 'A' was trying to plea innocence, she had a white dress on. However, as soon as she decided to engage in 'X's plot, she was back in a black dress. All of the men wore only black too.
In general, I couldn't really pull much more away from this film due to it's lack of plot and character development. It was still visually intriguing!
Yeah I definitely thought the change of dress was significant. I questioning whether or not she was trying to display some sort of innocence with the white dress but the idea of the dress switch never occurred to me til you pointed it out. That's really cool, man. Not sure if I'm remembering it right but didn't the dress switch occur after she was "shot?" Black dressing meaning the death of her innocence perhaps? Anyways, totally agree with you on how hard it was to dig into this film with such an weird, obscure plot. I have a love hate relationship with it.
ReplyDeleteHahaha love hate describes it perfectly. I actually think I remember there being a dress switch after she was "shot". I'll have to go back and check that out!
ReplyDeleteYou set up all the components of analysis here, but sadly don't quite move into one. Don't give up so soon! Take what you observe about the rigidity and formality, relax about the lack of plot thing, and go from there!
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