Review of La Jetée

The Juxtaposition Analysis of La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad are comparable. In terms of the same theme of time travel, the similar aesthetic perception of Left Bank Group in French New Wave, La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad share something common. But still, they respectively has their own distinctive attributes in the aspects such as cinematic languages and the connotation behind. In the following paragraphs, the similarities and differences between La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad and their own features will be argued. La Jetée is unfolded mostly in the subjective perception of the unknown man: After WWIII, Paris is ruined, and he's sent to time travel experiments for the sake of the present because of his strong obsession of the image from the past, that is, a woman who he always meets in his memory and then in the time travel. Even in his earliest memory he has seen the mysterious woman at the jetty and at the same time the death of a man. It is believed that both La Jetée and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad may be influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson, while in my opinion, it's more obvious for La Jetée. According to Bergson's philosophy system, the concept of time is of great significance: "He distinguished between scientific time as measured by clocks and other devices, and pure time, a flowing sequence of continuous events which we experience immediately and within which it is sometimes possible, he claims, to act freely and authentically." (Collinson 130) That is, in Bergson's point of view, rather than a material entity that is fixed and can be measured and divided by scientific devices, time is actually something only exists in our consciousness and perception, and it's dynamic, vibrant and fleeting like the continuous flow of consciousness and life. Our memory and even our whole life will be changed, as long as our perception of time is changed. So in La Jetée, the direction of time is actually removed, the past, present and future interlaces with each other, which makes them not distinguishable any more. In the end of the movie, we find that the man whose death is perceived at the jetty by him in his so called childhood memory is actually himself. Through the view of the man, what we find is not the objective truth any more, but the subjective reality in his mind which makes him trapped in certain moments and also removes the real elements in his past life that his memory is composed of. Then we can never be sure that when and where the man meets the woman, and whether they are actually lovers, and most importantly, whether the truth is exactly what it is perceived by the man. And notably, La Jetée, being different from other movies, La Jetée is composed of still photographs instead of motion pictures, which creates a sense of heaviness and separation. And to some extent it reverts the nature of motion pictures and process of the recall of memory.