Sans Soleil. Chris Marker. 1983. ⚃
The DVD of this I bought has La jetée as the main attraction, and this movie as the extra. Which makes sense, because I’ve heard of La Jetée, but I haven’t heard of this movie. Which makes me excited.
I really love the central conceit of this movie: It’s a woman doing a voiceover, telling us (the viewers) mostly about what she’s (or Marker’s?) been told by some man. Or something: I don’t think it’s totally clear who “he” and “I” are in the narration at all times? Or is it?
This is a documentary, basically, about Japan, but this overt distancing results in an elegiac tone and imbues everything with importance.
But… this basically goes through all the worst exoticising bits you’ve already seen from any documentary about Japan. “Oooh, it’s so exotic!” you’re meant to say, and while this may be excused by being en early example of the genre, it’s still rather annoying.
The bits from Guinea-Bissau don’t have this problem. I think.
[time passes]
OK, it’s more complicated than that. I mean, what this movie is about. I can totally see why it’s on the OTB list, but… it’s still not completely clicking with me.
So I’m doing the Banana Daiquiri…
I love banana, but I thought the booze/ice ratio was off…
… and it totally is. It just tastes weak? I feel there should be, like, twice as much booze in here. Lemme try that…
Nope, still feels unbalanced. It needs more flavour. Now it’s too boozy, but it still tastes mostly like ice.
This blog post is part of the Officially The Best series.