“La Jetee” is experimental filmmaking at its finest. In 1962, Chris Marker made a short film composed nearly entirely of still frame black and white photographs and told a breathtaking sci-fi mixed with a touching romance in a post-apocalyptic time travel story in the nuclear fallout after World War III.
The score’s cathedral filling elegaic choir immediately draws you into the story of a boy who vividly remembered a beautiful woman on the day the war began. It was the strength of this memory that convinced German scientists he would be appropriate for time travel experiments to go back in time and eventually forward in time to save the present. It wasn’t until the end of the film that I noticed a striking similarity between “La Jetee” and Terry Gilliam’s “12 Monkeys,” but that was no coincidence. Gilliam remade this highly influential film that was the first to consider so strongly and seriously the ramifications of time travel in a time when nuclear war terrified everyone.
As I mentioned, the film is told entirely through still images. Marker did so for the reason that the cinematic experience itself manipulates time in a way he hopes to emulate with his movie. But watching it I began to question what is a film? Does a film come alive in its live action, a moving camera with active cinematography? Or does it take meaning different from that of a photograph because of the way it is edited?
Further, who is the driving force behind the success of a film like this? Is it the photographer who captured every individual frame? Is it the writer who conceived of the post apocalyptic concept before anyone else? Or is it the director who first had the vision to film it in this way?
Well, Marker was both writer and director on the short, and thank goodness for it. His film is visionary and influential, and at 28 minutes, certainly not a difficult film to sit through.