Nothing spells meta like having a Last Year at Marienbad party for Easter, when San Moritz is beckoning and all you can afford is a rental of one of the most pretentious and bourgeois art movies ever made, and maybe the best, or worst, and both, certainly... maybe. Touches like a voiceover that slowly fades underneath booming organ tones as it speaks of wandering through an "edifice of a bygone era," with carpets thick and ornate mirrors and windows that reflect "galleries, side corridors that in turn lead to an empty room, a silent room where one's footsteps are absorbed by carpets so thick and heavy that they reach no one's ear." Repeat.
Watching it now in the 21st century it's hard to know if the stark black and white perfume and jewelry ads with sad-eyed women lounging by long obelisk-shaped pools, or beds or were they shrubs, surrounded by wealth and models, came first or if MARIENBAD launched them all. In case you haven't seen it, I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's from 1961 and directed by Alain Resnais and written by S/M intellectual Alain Robbe-Grillet, and is about a girl who may or may not have had an affair or been sexually assaulted in a hotel the year before by some sleazy, dead-in-the-eyes lothario who never stops lingering over her and who makes Boris Karloff look like Clark Gable. This scenario is played out over and over again, with the same cryptic narration about the hotel, shadows that switch sides and disappear in the lovely garden, and a bunch of people either sitting or standing by a row of chairs, oh and there's a memory of a snowbound chalet, which may or may not be just the painting hanging in the girl's hotel room, or the girl might be int the chalet, with a picture of Marienbad (though if the setting of the film is Marienbad or not, who can say, according to Wiki, it was filmed in several different chateaus to "produce a disorienting effect."And Coco Chanel made Seyrig's gowns! They're sleek, but shot cold as a diamond in a freezer.
I concocted this idea while trying to watch the film several times and realizing it worked best watching random chapters over a period of a week. In 15 minute intervals, at random, it's a masterwork. All together it's infuriating and worst of all, pretentious. And the actors don't mesmerize like they must when narrative is this thoroughly deconstructed. When all else fails in Godard or Bergman you can just stare into the celestial beauty of a female face, but as pretty as Delphine Seyrig is, as lovely as her Dietrich-ish gowns are, she really doesn't project the same goddess magnitude of, say, Monica Vitti or Bibbi Anderson, or Anna Karina. Imagine how dull L'AVENTURA, PERSONA or MY LIFE TO LIVE would be without the accessibility, the emotional spontaneity and realness in the starlet's faces. It's not her fault that she doesn't connect and seems trapped in a kind of capitalist hell, one of fine gowns, endless shots of ornate hallways, figures frozen in cocktail repose, and persistent suitor and cadaver-like husband. It's the auteur and writer who are so rigorously intellectual and formal they pin her like an etherized butterfly to the deathly vacant space, so empty past gestures are discussed over and over as if they one day will have meaning. And the organ music... it grates like a list of grievances... and every head of hair is slicked back to the point of cruelty. Empty corridors as far as the eye can see will eventually bore even the most hardened European intellectual (my Argentine ex-wife, a leftist-intellectual film maker who introduced me to Bunuel and Godard, called MARIENBAD the most pretentious piece of shit ever made.)
If you find the film's repetitious nonlinear, fractal-like structure is frustrating over a long haul... may I suggest the MARIENBAD the party game? Here is what you need:
* At least two other people to watch the movie with, ideally if you're in a love triangle with them (invite the person you like, and the one who likes you - the latter will definitely come).
* 3-7 chairs, ideally straight-backed dining room table style, arranged in a semi-circle in front of the TV screen.
* One large framed painting or picture of a winter landscape, ideally with a small house in the middle, lit from within, but who is in there? We don't know!
* A book of kitchen matches and a coffee table space (or card table)
There is a lot of mirroring and refracting in the film, and the idea for the game is to represent a mirror to the action onscreen, but an 'off' surrealist mirror. So when all the men are standing you stand, and freeze when they freeze and mimic their movements when they look in the mirror. Let's say Daphne hangs up the winter landscape painting on her wall, you would then take the painting out of the room and hide it. When she takes it off the wall and hides it, you would bring it out, as if she's passing the painting through the mirror/screen to you. When the men play that weird match game, you play too, and when the chairs are empty onscreen, you sit in them, and vice versa. When that gets old, watch the film; when the film gets old, play the game. Once you get in the habit, you should find yourself naturally going with the flow of the action, going to the bathroom as a character enters the screen, and vice versa, and you can get that post-modern affect high, and avoid being too bored by the film itself -- you can leave and come back and not miss much, or start in the middle, or pick a random chapter, or watch the same chapter ten times instead of the whole film once, and may find yourself in San Moritz, or Marienbad, as the hellish simulacrum comes crashing down and Christ rises like a star of the real in your heaven.
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