Saturday, March 19, 2011
La Jetee
During our class's viewing of La Jetee, I was astonished by the lack of dialogue and filming that I'm accustomed to see in typical films. My mind raced between stages of bewilderment as I fruitlessly attempted to make sense of the ever-complicating story. Due to this lack direction and the countless subsequent possibilities of horror, I found such techniques increasingly terrifying, as I never could rightly predict where the story would turn next. Previously, I had never thought still imaged shots would have such a lasting affect on my psyche. Quite the contrary, I had always felt the truly horrifying, particularly in the case of films, would be a sequence of disturbing events in motion (i.e. Saw, Hostel, etc.) where I would experience the event as it was laid out for me. However, La Jetee's ability to leave much of the action and interpretation thereof unknown left me much more on the edge of my seat, at least in my experience. I'm interested to know if others in the class had similar experiences with La Jetee or if I'm indeed so averse to horror films that I can not bear even the most basic, still-shot horrors.
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I didn't find the film frightening, but I was affected by the use of still frames rather than moving picture. This technique made the entire film feel like a memory, rather than a story. There was no stark beginning - just a boy seeing a man die. We are in his memory...even though we don't know who "he" is. Since the character is unknown, the memories presented can become our own. The movie left no time to figure out what was happening, but forced you to constantly look for the logic as it moved from image to image. I liked this, personally. I tend to find the end of most movies predictable, but this one managed to surprise and impress me.
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