How much you'll enjoy this may depend on how much of a mind (some would say tolerance) for storytelling that is not at all about the linear - to the point Christopher Nolan would have to sit in an immersion tank for a week with the 35mm film reels to figure it out - and about how events felt and what interactions between Claude (fitting that the actor is also a Claude, Claude Rich), and the women in his life (at home, at work, on the beach led up to. It certainly was a task to keep track of all the women in his life (aside from Catrine I mean, she stands out for more reasons than one), and that sporadically, as in this film's more or less direct descendant, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it does flip back from the stream of consciousness time-bender Claude is on to the present as the scientists try to figure out where (err, *when*) Claude will come back.
I think it helps that Claude Rich is a captivating actor. He's no Jim Carrey, but them who is in any time in film history? Rich has this seemingly calm demeanor for many scenes, and he seems like he's a pleasant enough man, but one almost forgets that the incident right before he was chosen - or, rather, we are reminded more than once a "computer" chose him under peculiar circumstances not fully explained (good old A. I. up to their tricks even in late 1960s France) - that he tried to kill himself just before he agrees to go into this experiment that only a mouse has done... that is, he has this affable and at times charming personality, and at others he can explode with anger. There's one little moment where he snaps at one of the women in his life and with a slight physical gesture- refusing her touch to his arm- that says a lot. This man has... issues, it seems.
I don't know if I really understood it entirely, and Eternal Sunshine I would still put as the more entertaining and engrossing and immediately philosophically dense picture (this aside from the visual bravura of that film). This isn't to say Resnais hasn't made a compellingly directed film, on the contrary that he focuses all of his stylistic vigor for the edit (also due to Jurgenson and Leloup his editors, one should note) means there's a relative simplicity to composition that allows the actors to take command of our attention. It's a haunted story of spiritual and psychological desolation, with occasional sparks of WTF-ery in what Claude is experiencing as he did, especially as it all comes back to what he did with (and to) Catrine, that means it's fine not to understand every beat of the film. To go back to Nolan again, feeling it is the key.
I hope to revisit this again some day, preferably at a retrospective (it asks to be seen in a theater). I want that giant bean-bag of an organism to envelop me when I have a free day. I also quite liked what the one woman said to Claude about cats and specifically the question if God created cats on his image. Whether you're a slave to time-slilling through your own romantic and tragic and very average everyday and a mystery with a murder (until it is not a mystery anymore, and the suppression for Claude bubbles up, as well as to us), or a slave to being too cat-like, it's always something!
I think it helps that Claude Rich is a captivating actor. He's no Jim Carrey, but them who is in any time in film history? Rich has this seemingly calm demeanor for many scenes, and he seems like he's a pleasant enough man, but one almost forgets that the incident right before he was chosen - or, rather, we are reminded more than once a "computer" chose him under peculiar circumstances not fully explained (good old A. I. up to their tricks even in late 1960s France) - that he tried to kill himself just before he agrees to go into this experiment that only a mouse has done... that is, he has this affable and at times charming personality, and at others he can explode with anger. There's one little moment where he snaps at one of the women in his life and with a slight physical gesture- refusing her touch to his arm- that says a lot. This man has... issues, it seems.
I don't know if I really understood it entirely, and Eternal Sunshine I would still put as the more entertaining and engrossing and immediately philosophically dense picture (this aside from the visual bravura of that film). This isn't to say Resnais hasn't made a compellingly directed film, on the contrary that he focuses all of his stylistic vigor for the edit (also due to Jurgenson and Leloup his editors, one should note) means there's a relative simplicity to composition that allows the actors to take command of our attention. It's a haunted story of spiritual and psychological desolation, with occasional sparks of WTF-ery in what Claude is experiencing as he did, especially as it all comes back to what he did with (and to) Catrine, that means it's fine not to understand every beat of the film. To go back to Nolan again, feeling it is the key.
I hope to revisit this again some day, preferably at a retrospective (it asks to be seen in a theater). I want that giant bean-bag of an organism to envelop me when I have a free day. I also quite liked what the one woman said to Claude about cats and specifically the question if God created cats on his image. Whether you're a slave to time-slilling through your own romantic and tragic and very average everyday and a mystery with a murder (until it is not a mystery anymore, and the suppression for Claude bubbles up, as well as to us), or a slave to being too cat-like, it's always something!