Last Year at Marienbad

I did not like this movie, but I enjoyed watching it. The whole experience was very frustrating and I'm noticing that it's a trend with a lot of the movies in this class, but this one made me realize that I'm approaching these movies in the wrong way. I looked through the notes I took during the movie and during the class discussion, but very little of what I wrote makes sense to me. Now I just have to figure out the "right" way to figure these movies out, because the first thought I have at the end of each movie should not be "my brain hurts."

The frustrating thing about this movie was that it wasn't very stimulating intellectually (if anything, it was confusing), but it was an awesome sensory experience. Many times I found myself staring at the screen like I was watching a picture show only to realize I had stopped paying attention to the action because it was pretty. I imagine that also contributed to why i couldn't wrap my head around this movie. My favorite thing about this movie (and the thing I found most memorable) was when the background would change but the dialogue or action would continue. It was such a huge change thrown into the viewing experience because for the majority of the movie I depended on my eyes, but in these scenes it was like my eyes were having a seizure and I had to use my ears. It was a bizarre feeling to actually become aware of using my ears, but that's exactly what it felt like. In fact, throughout most of the film the silence is so constant and even seems loud to me. Using my ears rather than my eyes to allow the scene to continue kept reminding me to pay attention to something besides the pretty pictures.

This film made me aware of the many different elements of a film that come together to tell a story, mainly because most of these elements were missing or used in a different way. I found it difficult to trust any information I got through my ears. As I mentioned earlier, the silence in some scenes is almost oppressive, so during multiple scenes there was no indication of what I was supposed to feel or what was going on, I just had to watch it happening. This enhanced the feeling that I was watching a silent picture show sometimes, other times it made me feel like I was waiting for something that never came. In these cases, my ears were useless. In other cases, the soundtrack was misleading. Early on in the film two characters were having (in my opinion) a boring and relatively unimportant conversation, but the music playing was entirely too fast and intense for the scene. It felt like my eyes and ears were at war and it took me a while to sort out which I was supposed to trust. In that case I had to ignore my ears and go with my eyes, whereas in my earlier example when he background changes but the sound is consistent, I had to go with my ears and ignore my eyes.

Normally, watching a move with subtitles doesn't bother me because I can read them quickly and watch what's going on. However, with this movie I found it more difficult to follow the action and read along at the same time. It's just a small distraction and has little to do with the movie itself, but that did have an effect on how I watched. I'm not sure if it was because they were small or moved too fast. It's probably also because I tend to read people's lips when they speak and that was obviously not an option here. Unlike with Orpheus, the characters in this film had stone faces. There were no facial expressions, and it made it feel impossible to really get a feel for the emotion of a character or a scene or anything. Without those emotions, I felt extremely limited in my ability to understand--throughout the entire movie, I seriously questioned my ability to trust the information presented, and I think that's a major reason I didn't like it.

Many times, the dialogue was in the past tense as the action played out on screen. I found it extremely off-putting to watch something happen while listening to it described like it already happened.

The other problem I have with this movie is that watching it felt like I was watching someone who created a film with the sole intent to say "look what I can do!" I saw a lot of story telling techniques, but I cannot remember the story the director was trying to tell. I think this film was a great success in film making but a complete failure in storytelling. I'm sure many people disagree with that, but I don't see how the two sides of this film (the story itself and the way it is told) unite, and because of that the story is lost to me.

To be perfectly honest, I don't have anything intelligent or even a little interesting to offer about the article. My ideas about the article don't even make sense to me and I don't see the point in confusing anyone else.