La Jetée (1962) by Chris Marker

La Jetee initiates its sequence with a deeply enticing scene, both for the audience and the protagonist himself as it is explained. The man throughout whom we experience the movie’s universe is ever-haunted by his childhood reminiscence of a man shot and dying in front of his astonished gaze. This traumatic experience is also comprised by the presence of an astounded young woman whom has witnessed the same incident as the protagonist as a boy, in front of the airport platform. The eerie incident the protagonist’s young self has experienced is therefore presented to us in the movie’s prologue and is ultimately proven to be not only the catalyst to the movie’s plot, but its climax as well, as it is revealed later.

The film then transits to shots of a dystopian future, the aftermath of a Third World War, where people live underground in rags and face horrid conditions, as life as we know it is permanently extinguished. Scientists thus, conduct trials on a newly built time-travelling machine, in an attempt to look for help in the future. The trials for the new technology are to be made in the past The protagonist is then selected as an ideal specimen for these experiments, in merits of possessing the rare attribute of having retained a memory of the past so vividly, as to sustain an efficient link to that era for the time-transition to it to take place smoothly, avoiding thus the shock other specimens underwent through in the same endeavour. That specific memory is the very scene the movie starts off with , as we consecutively come to find out. It seems to have stigmatized the protagonist perhaps a bit too overtly. The movie is possibly foreshadowing the event’s impending significance to him.

The experiment involving him is deemed a success and we watch him wandering the streets of a pre-war Paris. There he encounters a young woman and wonders whether she is the same woman that has also witnessed the murder of the man that led him into being part of this experiment. Recognizing her essentially prompts him to meet her and the two of them hang out and explore the city together for extended periods of time and as a result they fall in love and have an affair. When the time comes, given that the experiment was fruitful, he is called back to the present in order to be sent to the future. He successfully reaches there and is given a power supply to reignite the world’s industry back in the present, which he delivers. The scientists upon achieving their purpose and getting what they opted for, decide that the protagonist is no longer useful and must be eliminated. Upon waiting for his execution he is visited by the citizens of the future that are also time-travellers. They give him the option to return to the future with them in order to escape his ill fate, but he, instead, asks to be transferred to the past in order to be reunited with the woman he loves.

His wish is thus granted and he is transferred into the past. At that point we realise that the setting is familiar and that the scene we are about to watch is the one we have seen in the very beginning, but this time from another perspective, that of the grown protagonist, the man that was murdered. The protagonist spots the woman he loves in the crowd and as he approaches her he gets shot by one of the scientists, who seems to have followed him there in order to terminate him. In this final sequence, the building irony reaches its climax, as we realise that all possibility of a positive resolution for the protagonist has been dramatically shuttered from the very beginning. Paradoxically, the moment that marked and defined his course in life was the moment of his own death prematurely witnessed.

This interpretation inevitably raises questions concerning the nature of time, openly challenging any perception of linearity. In the face of the question, “what came first, the chicken or the egg”, the answer seems to be neither of the two, as it is impossible to put the events in an order of a straight line. The movie itself seems very much like a circular argument. The very reason the protagonist was ever involved in the events that caused his own death, was him being traumatized as a child from witnessing his own death. It was the vivid memory of that experience that shaped him into the ideal candidate, for the time-travel experiment, that he was. The very impulse to meet the woman he fell in love with and for which he wanted to return to the past, was generated from seeing her during the event that scarred his childhood. If he never saw her in his early years which led to falling in love with her, he would probably move to the future and avoid death. In the case he avoided death, his child self in growing up would never meet her, as none of the above would have happened. In essence, his own death caused his own death; clearly indicating that past, present and future are interactive entities and time-travelling has simultaneous consequences in all dimensions of time.

At this point another question seems to surface, as one wonders, could he really had escaped his fate, since seeing himself dying as a child conveys a sense of inevitability as to the sequence of events that are to follow. It is as if his lifespan is a circle that cannot be broken, as one event leads to another. The alternative to this view of time would be that of a spiral, a circle that can be broken into another, with the events taking place over and over in a loop, from a linear understanding, creating thus infinite possibilities/dimensions. Perhaps if he, for some reason, chose to move to the future, instead of the past, he would still be alive and in this manner break the circle into another, with his child-self never witnessing his death and therefore never taking part in the experiment. From this perspective the movie presents us with one variation of the many.

This interpretation however, rouses another question, as to whether the freedom of choice needed to break the circle exists. From one perspective, having been in love with the woman eliminated any other possible path of choice. In a sense we are all limited to our perception; one has no other choice than to be one’s self and act upon the beliefs and emotions accumulated by that self through experience. The protagonist’s experiences with the woman left him with no other choice than to love her and thus wanting to be with her, inevitably leading to his fatal decision to join her in the past.

To conclude, La Jetee ultimately serves as to generate questions about the nature of things, rather than give answers. In its simplicity, it functions as a deeply thought provoking and visually stunning piece of art. It gives one the freedom to reflect on one’s own views through it, while challenging the conventional understanding of space and time, prompting one to explore new concepts and ideas.

Persona (1966) by Ingmar Bergman

Persona seems to be mainly occupied with modernist and existentialist concerns, which clearly surface from the very beginning of the movie through the psychiatrist’s monologue, addressing Elisabet. It is one of the most powerful moments of the film which seems to truly dip into the human psyche and evocatively define existence as “the hopeless dream to be”, a space where “every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace”.

As the camera suggests, by focusing on the psychiatrist’s face as she advices Elisabet, her speech does not only concern her, but the audiences as well, whom as Elisabet, fell momentarily silent to watch the film. Within it, the audiences traditionally strive to find a persona with which they can possibly identify and thus be distracted from their own experience and struggles of the human condition, their own “hopeless dream of being”. There lie, however, certain peculiarities in the persona the audiences are called to assume in this particular film, as they are invited into a role of playing no role, which Elisabet, being an actress who refuses to act any longer, represents. Elisabet rejects and assumes a persona defined by the absence of one, a state of nothingness that pushes the audience to draw once again to themselves and their own persona, acknowledging its artifice and limitations and thus acknowledging that all that remains there is nothing. It is the essential nothing that allows the possibility for humanity to be anything, the possibility to assume any role.

Furthermore, the existential concerns expressed in the aforementioned psychiatrist’s speech, are fused with those concerning the medium of film, asserting that it is “the shared condition of both life and film art”. Thus it is essential to consider the self-referential nature of the film, which is clearly illustrated by the stunning cinema-themed opening sequence and the frequent appearance of screens and cameras throughout. Representing a persona of no persona deems it a film that cancels itself out. Through its self-referential quality, it disrupts the spellbinding effect of cinema and defamiliarizes the audience with the narrative and characters, becoming, in a manner, a film of no film, an attempt to depict a negation. This is perhaps implied in the instance where the film burns and dissolves, right after we witness the first change in Alma’s persona, who deliberately leaves the glass shard for Elizabeth to step on.

Persona, also centres around the relationship of Alma and Elisabet, which is presented as an encounter with the other, which inevitably transforms the self. It examines what the psychiatrist earlier addressed as: “The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone.” Alma, during their stay to the summer house, tries to fill the void of silence with words, building an eerie intimacy between them that causes the boundaries of identities to gradually dissolve. Frustrated with Elisabet’s absent persona she ends up evoking the actress’ persona within herself to compensate for its lack. By the end of their stay, the movie hints in various ways that she has indeed become her. She seems to possess insight, she could not otherwise have had, into Elisabet’s internal world and even shares intimacy with her husband as if she were her. Alma’s utterance “No! I’m not like you…I’m not Elisabet Vogler.” suggests her awareness in regards to the transformation taking place and its denial, as we witness her increasing loss of her former persona and her descent further into the other.

The transformative change however, is at its most evident in the instance where Alma throws poignant accusations at Elisabet, in regards to her son, toward whom she is utterly cold and indifferent, having therefore failed at the conventional role of motherhood. At that moment we witness the merging of their faces onto one, showing how the perceivably more dominant and attractive identity has subsumed the less confident one. It is a scene that perhaps aims to shed light on the nature of identities, as containing no essence and being mere roles one easily assumes and can put on and off. Perhaps this understanding is the very source of Elisabet’s silence and her refusal to wear one. By transferring herself onto Alma, Elisabet is further liberated from the role she seeks to escape and she sinks further into nothingness. Alma even makes her say “nothing”, towards the end of their stay, in order to convey her state of being, as a non-being. This idea is further suggested by her sudden disappearance towards the end of the movie.

Ironically, it is a film that attempts to express negation and nothingness by presenting us with something. Within the limits of our perception, language and culture, we cannot escape representation, as it is the prerequisite of all communication and at the same time the root of our confinement into roles and personas. Even negations need to be expressed, in order to be understood as such. “Life trickles in from the outside, and you’re forced to react”, as the psychiatrist informs us. Elisabet even in attempting to become nothing is still something, as she is still enacting a role, “a part…out of apathy”. She is advised to “go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest…then [she] can leave it, just as [she has] left [her] other parts one by one.” Thus, as spectators we witness a film and a persona within it that are self-aware and attempt to cancel themselves out, to reach the unreachable nothingness and in this manner liberate themselves from the inauthenticity of lies. We in turn, through the aid of this peculiar medium, are simply invited to dismantle what we perceive as ourselves and join their futile attempt within the “hopeless dream of being”.