Last Year in Marienbad

If you thought Inception, Christopher Nolan’s cerebral tale of dreams within dreams was impressive, then behold a certified tenet in the genre: Last Year in Marienbad.

A luxurious hotel room, adorned in exquisite pieces of art, surrounded by never-ending lush gardens. X (Sasha Pitoeff) attempts to convince A (Giorgio Albertazzi) that they were once in love, that they met in the same hotel one year prior, agreeing A would leave her husband M (Sasha Pitoeff) for X, and they would rendezvous the following year. Only, A does not remember X and as X recounts their past conversations and memories in hopes of rousing recollection, he realises the more he says, the less he knows…

Alain Resnais’ previous tour de force, Hiroshima mon amour, hinted at his capabilities to astound and regale his audience, however the world remained unprepared for this, his follow-up feature. Co-written with Alain Robbe-Grillet, the French author and literary critic famed for leading the literary movement, "le nouveau roman" (the new novel), essentially novelists who penned stark, sterile descriptions instead of allegory and metaphor, anchored by their underlying exploration of the disjunction of time and space.

Resnais provides a master class in how effortless good filmmaking can be, stretching the boundaries of the medium and basking in the rays truly great narrative (or lack thereof) can provide. He helped redefine the principles of filmmaking, and inspired a whole generation of audiences and filmmakers to come. His surreal juxtaposition of physical images and memory used by Darren Aronofksi in The Fountain, Marc Caro’s Dante 01 (currently showing on Cinémoi), to Duncan Jones’ Moon or Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, to name just a few…