An obvious forerunner to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Resnais' film on the surface is about a time travel experiment being conducted on a man who has survived a recent suicide attempt and has no family, thus making him an "ideal candidate" to take the next step beyond lab mice. It's not exactly a time travel film in the conventional sense though, because even though the man's body disappears in the present from the funky embryonic structure the scientists have constructed, it doesn't re-appear in the past. He just sees snippets of his life in a trip down memory lane of sorts, scrambled up as if it's been put into a blender, while the scientists flounder about trying to retrieve him into the present.
I confess there were times when re-constructing this man's life and the women in it were a little puzzling to me, but the overall picture certainly emerges, as did a different perspective for the lives we lead. A life seen in this way reveals more of its patterns, the moments of joy counterbalanced with those of sadness, the moments of ennui interspersed with those of genuine connection with others. Poor decision, anxiety, regret - does any of it really matter? Perhaps in seeing it this way we realize better how fleeting any one particular condition is, that all of these things are like little waves in the sea of our lives, and that love is the thing to cling to before our inevitable end. While the story could have been brushed up a bit, the bittersweet emotions come through, and I enjoyed it.
I confess there were times when re-constructing this man's life and the women in it were a little puzzling to me, but the overall picture certainly emerges, as did a different perspective for the lives we lead. A life seen in this way reveals more of its patterns, the moments of joy counterbalanced with those of sadness, the moments of ennui interspersed with those of genuine connection with others. Poor decision, anxiety, regret - does any of it really matter? Perhaps in seeing it this way we realize better how fleeting any one particular condition is, that all of these things are like little waves in the sea of our lives, and that love is the thing to cling to before our inevitable end. While the story could have been brushed up a bit, the bittersweet emotions come through, and I enjoyed it.