《日月无光》经典影评10篇
《日月无光》是一部由克里斯·马克执导，Florence Delay / 阿丽尔·朵巴丝勒 / Riyoko Ikeda主演的一部纪录片类型的电影，特精心从网络上整理的一些观众的影评，希望对大家能有帮助。
《日月无光》影评(一)：千里之遥，日月无光
西非几内亚比绍、东京、冰岛……关于旅行 的书信体纪录片
祭祀的花般少妇，印象很深。
结尾画面在日本离婚，火烧仪式，以示情断意绝。
搞怪的剪切，诡异的构图转换 超现实的节奏感和哲学色彩 充满幻觉，这就是他们的效果
《日月无光》影评(二)：日本
一大堆碟中挑来挑去不知选那张，有些刻意地不去选日本影片，不是日本电影难看，而是拍得太好，结果总在看了。所以，似乎这次要和自己拧着不看日本电影。
结果，竟然还是一部关于日本的电影（碟的封面可能是搞错了），如果要给此片写关键词的话可以有：人类学、文化、流动、面孔等等，意象，甚至说旁白叙述中的内容如此丰富，好象无从说起，只能说让我对日本产生了一丝向往，想去看看。
《日月无光》影评(三)：无题
一本很法国，很电影的电影
一本深刻的，不懈探索电影表现形式更多可能性的电影。
虽然作者是以他者的视角来观察和审视日本，奇观化的审美视角略有些流于表面，也并没有针对个体的深入探讨，甚至不时流露出胜利者审视战犯的姿态，但本片对日本文化和社会细致和深入的观察，以及作者站在个体情感和历史社会视角对此进行的剖析和思辨，是具有人类文明普适性的，甚至可以说也具有了一定人类学上的意义。
本片风格可以说和作者前作《堤》出入不大。
《夜与雾》，鲁什，杜拉斯，雷乃，这些伟大的纪录片和电影作者们将会一直传承下去。
纪录片作为一种思考的艺术形式，一种审视内心和世界的媒介将依旧充满巨大的力量
《日月无光》影评(四)：并不是没有阳光
这真是很少见的纪录片形式，如果说不是纪录片也可以。内容分散但收获很多。
对日本描述的较多，我看到了日本的失业，日本的宗教信仰，日本的政党选择，日本年轻女孩子的快乐，以及日本奇特好玩的各种仪式，甚至还有离婚仪式。
对美国的描述主要是希区柯克《迷魂记》的拍摄场景，今昔之对照。
非洲，井井有条的生活节奏，以及勤劳的妇女，尤其是工地上搬石头的快乐妇女。还有她们的微笑。
至于冰岛，则是喷发的火山，火山灰掩埋的房子。
从始至终平静叙述的画外音串连着不同国家的人物与风俗。虽然看到很多的不尽人意，却实实在在给人生活的希望。谁能想到，85年以后日本会迎来史上最大的房地产泡沫？非洲还是仍旧贫穷。
但浓厚的生活气息不由得让你还是深深的爱着你周围的世界。那种不舍。
《日月无光》影评(五)：沉浸的梦
除了忽闪而过的两个香港街景和在日本单元中某个电视屏幕中出现的“西游记”三个字，没有阳光也同样没有中国元素，却在光怪陆离的异国风情和沉缓的幕后音中令我得到似乎惟有在梦境中才能体会到一种强烈的生命体验的共鸣，似乎帮我找到了一种表达方式，将人生的积郁混合在良莠不齐的人文视界中冷静的表达出来，这种纯粹的情绪化的元素让我十分享受即使对电影技法运用的无知也能体验到的崇高感和敬畏感。
我无法表达，我似乎只能复述，在画外音提及sunless的来由时出现的幽暗的林荫道下的喷水池，以及那些粗颗粒的阴暗冷寂的令人发慌的田园风光，以及无数sunless的令我着迷的画面：白鸟栖息的树冠，卢梭的墓碑，东京的冷漠街景，旧金山的锈红色大桥下的吞噬黑石的白色海浪。我在想，导演一开始就提及日本文学修辞的乏匮，光是词语本身便足以表达蕴意。所以我又想，这部电影对我便是一个宏大精密的修辞。
《日月无光》影评(六)：《没有阳光》的地方
我忽然有了想法，不，是采自记录片《没有阳光》的。
尽管被以为是一个“跨越时空的人间悲剧”，但我仍不以“左岸派”之叙事手法来规避自己的认识取向，因为我越来越“左”了。
“西非”和“日本”之间的空间架构，使“死亡”不惮是以显性的面目来实现，那掩藏在“信仰”和“经济强势”悸动中的隐性回望是另人倦怠的......
一个变化的，属于“建筑的世纪”是空虚的“静”的墓地。
电影是主线，不光是如此，“鹿”，活的，死的，“猫”，活的，死的。
噢！日本也有显性的“死亡”征象。还有那期待中的“情色”維末。
不仅是科幻的，武术的，卡通的...银座的展示,正是日本人隐性罪恶之上的显性徵象,不是"真象"。
那连动的快感,那传递的节奏,
电影诉说什么,
政治及迷乱的暴力,不就是我们每天的生活吗？
不管是赤军还是自民党,亦或是摇滚。
那源自地狱,《没有阳光》的地方。
《日月无光》影评(七)：创作是玄学
起初打算看这个，是想给自己的片子找点灵感，因为形式上或多或少有些相似。但看完之后，我放弃了对我原本预想的自己的片子的所谓形式。强行去追求不一样的外壳，却不知最自由最真诚的创作是没有任何框架的，否则完成的东西，顶多可以被称之为电影或者商品，而绝不是work of art。
一直讨厌没有意义的事物，被创作出的作品尤其如此，这是我的评判标准之一。任何艺术本身都不是伟大的，赋予艺术伟大的是生命的律动、宇宙的呼吸和思想的流动以及对未知的探索。
世界上所有的事物都是有信息的传达的，但是每一件事物在每一个人看来，所传达的东西是不一样的。举个最简单的例子。大部分人看猫，他所直观接收到的信息，是这只猫真可爱，或者我喜欢猫，或者我不喜欢猫。还有些人看猫，他通过所接收到的信息，联想到的是，这只猫是否也会像人在看猫一样去观察人类。再有些人看猫，可能想的就是，这只猫会不会就是神灵的化身，否则为什么区区一只猫就可以拥有信众无数让人类甘心为仆。然而再可爱的猫，看他个三五年也就那样了；但是一个简单的问题，猫是不是神的化身，就足矣让人思考一辈子了。（至于猫是不是神的化身，阿伦雷乃《我爱你我爱你》里就曾提出过了这个问题。）这大概就可以解释了为什么看同一部影片时，有些人昏昏欲睡、食之无味；而有些人却目不转睛、甘之如饴。我去年冬天有阵子失眠特别严重的时候，把《去年在马里昂巴德》下在了手机上，睡前打开，十五分钟必然睡着。我不否认它是独一无二的作品，我确实也能看得目不转睛，然而这种目不转睛是无意识的，我的大脑没有在活动，没有在进行思考，所以我自然就困了。
很多电影发展早期所留下的影像是格外迷人的。这种迷人来自于它不自觉地记录了真实，是进行了虚假的人为干预后所拍摄出的电影所不具备的特质。画面上所呈现出的是真实的生命和生活，如果没有摄影机，我们永远也不会亲眼看到百余年前的世界。画面上的每一个人都曾经真实存在过，虽然他们早已不知身在何方，但他们也被这个世界永远地记录了下来。我们不了解他们的一切，但我们和他们产生了一种链接，这种链接来自于通过摄像机所产生的我们对他们的注视。为什么不试着去感受他们呢？透过影像我们可以感受到人的灵魂吗？当你感受到他们的灵魂时，自然会明白为什么这样的影像是迷人且伟大的。而《日月无光》所具有的，正是这种魅力。影像让真实的历史取代了记忆。记忆中微不足道的一瞬间却被摄影机所记录下来成为某种永恒。通过这个永恒，我们再去感受。
“我在想那些不拍片,不照相,不录影的人是怎么记忆的？到底人类是如何去记忆的呢？”
“我将用我一生的心力试著了解关于记忆的运行。记忆并非遗忘的反面，而是遗忘的内在连结。我们不是'记忆'事物,我们重写记忆，就像我们去重写历史一样。”
“在每一个面孔底下的,记忆将会被那些伪造出来的集体记忆所取代。千百个由个人创伤所组成的记忆将成为整个历史的苦痛。”
原来，历史和记忆，是由生命所书写的。记忆会出现差错，历史会被篡改，但是生命留下的痕迹不会消失。是生命就会有灵魂，但灵魂没有高低贵贱之分，灵魂都是通透真实的。人有善恶，事有是非。但灵魂只有两种，可悲的或是可敬的。可敬的灵魂可以创作出具有人性甚至是神性的作品，可悲的则不。综上所述，创作是玄学。想搞艺术吗？可是你有灵魂吗？
《日月无光》影评(八)：因为我知道时间永远是时间，地点始终是地点而且仅仅是……
ecause I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
——
把乘坐地铁的过程处理成（每个人）看（内心的）电影的过程是很天才的。其间的影像和音响效果都有《潜行者》的影子。
不妨多放几句艾略特在这里
或者象一列地铁火车，在地道里，在车站与车站之间停得太久
旅客们交谈之声纷起，又逐渐消寂于静默，
而你在每张脸孔后面看到内心的空虚正在加深
只留下没有什么可想的恐惧在心头升起；
——《四首四重奏·东科克》
当列车启动的时候，旅客们安顿下来
开始品尝水果、翻阅书刊和公务函件
（前来给他们送行的人们也离开了月台），
随着漫长时刻催人欲睡的节奏
他们的脸色从悲痛舒展为轻松。
旅人们，向前行进吧！这不是从过去
逃往不同的生活，也不是逃往任何未来；
你们不是刚才离开那个车站的人群
也不是行将到达终点的人们，
……
——《四首四重奏·干燥的萨尔维吉斯》
这个导演是个牛人，神龙见首不见尾，爱猫，爱日本，还有塔可夫斯基。 他的《塔可夫斯基的一天》是我看过的，最好的塔可夫斯基的纪录片。
希区柯克的《迷魂记》，克利斯·马克看了19遍。我一直疑惑，为什么一个(二流商业片)导演受到了法国新浪潮大师们的一致追捧，几乎成了一尊神？
《日月无光》影评(九)：读君之信，犹随其行
在看完《持摄像机的人》时重新梳理了自己对电影的一些认知，如果说吉尔斯滕.约翰逊把碎片的影像重新整理为日记形式的混合题材而让人着迷，那么影像作为一种记录的方式是否可以由文本的形式来决定它最终所展现的形式？在阿伦雷乃的电影中我们已经见识过声画分离，《去年在马里昂巴德》中影像塑造了一个记忆的空间，而旁白（文本）则架构了过去、现在、未来的男女相逢的节点，我们开始体会到文本可以给影像附加更多意义，不仅仅是作为一种简单的诠释而是改写和重塑碎片化、模糊化的影像，赋予全新的个人意义。克里斯马克的《日月无光》以书信作为文本把旅行的影像串联，夹杂了私人的情感和联想蔓延成旅行见思的一个过程，其中出现最多的是东京的浮光掠影，克里斯马克尽兴的感受着东京的多元，留下深深的思恋。
电影在教给我们一种新的视觉规则和讲述方式时，文本则改变并扩展了我们对于影像的重构以及我们可以拓展其边界观念。声音和画面作为一种观看的标准，而具有创新力的艺术家们将声音从原始的画面分离出来进行新的创造，那些碎片影像的收集则是对世界的收集，那些情感和批注将世间万物尽收胸襟。
在《日月无光》中克里斯马克在列车中看着睡着的乘客们，用摄影机注视着他们的脸，根据不同人的相貌联想到不同类型的电影实在是有趣，在这里摄像机作为人眼记录所见，而剪辑进去的电影画面则作为大脑中的联想所呈现，它的有趣来源于真实性和私密性。
电影自其诞生之日起，在经历无声时期的摄影雕琢，影像的魅力被放大后反而进入有声时代我们在声音和画面的抉择中做了很多粉饰或者妥协而形成和真实性的距离感，所以道格玛95中提及只采用环境声，自然作为一种视听艺术只使用环境声是很大的一种困难和挑战。在克里斯马克的游记中我们在冰岛、非洲、东京、香港等地任意的切换着，在空间和时间上的随意革新了我们对于电影线性的认知，但是在它被称为电影的前提之下我们对它的题材限制是书信，书信和小说不同，小说的故事常规还是要按照线性发展的但是书信之随意真是想到哪写到哪。
如今，电影几乎已经被视为一种娱乐的产物。这就意味着和其他大众性的艺术形式一样，电影并未被大多数人看作一种艺术。电影的功效真的只要满足我们可怜的视听欲望就足够了吗？我想在大多数热爱电影的人影像观探索中都是在找寻一种诗意的感受，由于电影给人以一种游历了非真实的记忆的幻觉，在影像的帮助下我们潜入别人的生活之中经历着和自己繁复生活截然不同的体验，一部电影就是一个高度浓缩的记忆晶体，而我们享受这种诗意的落差。我们迷恋文学的力量不仅仅是因为单个文字的排列组合可以形成我们意想不到的世界，我们也可以借机走入作者的内心窥视着别人的情感，在《持摄像机的人》和《日月无关》中真实的影像被串联，一部日记和一封书信所传达的真实情感更能让人有所共通。
如果我们接受摄像机所记录的情形，我们就会在二十四格中定格自己的记忆。作为碎片化的影像外人很难理解其中的关联，然而文本作为记忆的陈述填补这一不可被分享的空白，作为一个创作者在分享自己经验和想法之时不可能只简单的展现无意义的片段想法，只有叙述性的东西才会使我们理解。作为空间和时间相交的艺术形态，一些伟大的实验者已经在开拓了影像边界，我们从塔可夫斯基、候麦、戈达尔、阿伦雷乃等先驱的电影中已经体会到电影幻化的形态和更视觉性的美感。
在伍尔夫经典短篇小说中《墙上的斑点》中，在躺椅里的伍尔夫由斑点联想到种种让人感知意识肆意流动的美妙，而在克里斯马克的《日月无光》中我们从导演记录下的冰岛三个孩童的影像开始踏上记忆之旅，思路在先影像在后我们跟随着克里斯马克感知着不同的地域文化和导演一起感叹记忆、时间的幻想般的存在。
最后以电影的开头艾略特的诗作为结尾：因为我知道时间永远只是时间。空间永远只是空间。
《日月无光》影评(十)：A wired and impressive ‘Sans Soleil’ ——Discover the feasibility of different structures in movies.
Film is a form of art expression of politics, history, literature and philosophy.
——Preface
Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, the centerpiece of his triptych, the other two is La Jetee (The Pier, 1962) and Level 5 (1996), is regarded as a loosely-bound trilogy: the jetty projects forwards in time to its own displacement. The premise of Sans Soleil is that an unseen woman reads and comments upon letters she receives from a globetrotting freelance cameraman, Sandor Krasna, whose name we discover only in the closing credits. She reads the letters out by way of a commentary, which reflects both obliquely and directly on the images we see “the two extreme poles of survival”, Japan and Africa, the latter represented by the former Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde; but his dispatches also take in Iceland, San Francisco (for a tour of the locations of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo) and the Ile-de-France (the land of France). As the timeline goes by, Krasna wonders (Marker puts it in his own presentation of the film) about the meaning of this representation of the world of which he is the instrument, and about the role of the memory he helps create. Extracts of other along with Krasna’s images altered synthetically by a Japanese friend of his, Hayao Yamaneko, who deisgns video games and as a sideline obsessively feeds film images into a synthesizer, whose de-naturalized visual world he calls the Zone, in homage to Andrey Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979). Finally, the references provided by these various characters have been assembled by a filmmaker, not in the form of a conventional narrative, but “in the fashion of a musical composition, with recurrent themes, counterpoints and mirror-like fugues.”
There is a lot of way to interpret Sans Soleil, such as references from literature, history, politics and films. To begin with, from the literary point, San Soleil refers to two authors: Tomas Stearns Eliot, whose poet is quoted at the beginning of the film, and Sei Shonagon, the Japanese writer who is cited repeatedly.
econd, San Soleil makes references to several historical events, for instance, the citation of the kidnapping of Kim Dae Jung and Che Guevara reflect the fact that Japanese started to have reaction to foreign policy and indicate the Japanese affiliation of changing. This is because Japanese was influenced by the rise of a new postwar generation to leadership and policy-making position. The differences in outlook between the older leaders still in positions of power and influence and the younger generation that was replacing them complicated formulation of foreign policy. In addition, the legacy of Amilcar Cabral untied the independence movement of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, and Luiz, the president of guinea-Bissau decorated Major Nino in a military award ceremony. We learned ‘what looked like a moving affirmation of revolutionary solidarity was in fact a viper’s nest of bitterness and resentment.’
Moreover, The sequences in San Francisco references Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Marker’s own earlier film La Jetée (The Pier). In addition, Marker’s use of the name "The Zone" to describe the space in which Hayao Yamaneko’s images are transformed, diegetic and non-diegetic sound contribute to companied voices and music altered synthetically, is a homage to Stalker, a film by Andrei Tarkovsky.
Literature reference
Tomas Stearns Eliot
The film begins with a piece of T.S Eliot’s poem, Ash Wednesday. It’s easy to find the connection between Chris Marker and T.S Eliot. T.S Eliot is good at writing free verse and full of random thoughts. “Eliot is, I think, a relatively indifferent, or uninterested, observer of the phenomenal world… His direct affirmation are always summings-up of this style, concentrations for which the rest of his verse appears as so many hints.” Writes A. Alvarez. To some degree, Chris Marker imitates Eliot’s free verse style. Furthermore, Paul Levy notes in The Wall Street Journal: “these formerly lost early works are meaning-laden exceptions to … Eliot’s magpie poetic method, the making of patchwork patterns of phrases and strings of words, very often borrowed from other poets’ verses, without the use of quotation marks. ” Same performance practice also applied in Sans Soleil, Chris Marker edits movies randomly and does not build bridges between the leaps of clips, like the style of stream of consciousness.
In East Coker from The Four Quartets, Eliot writes:
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about
In the same way, “he told me about the January light on the station stairways” in San Soleil: the faces on the train, eyes closed. Meditation, self-critique, aspiration, anxiety, weariness, defeat, exhaustion, compliance, satisfaction, release, delay and perseverance—the scene of different sleepy faces blend with the clips from horror movies, like the dreams of these sleeping people. We cannot know what we will find when these reposeful masks are peeled away from these faces and we may gaze at the true interior.
ei Shonagon
Chris marker want to illustrate “Japanese style” and cultural by cueing Sei Shonagon’s poem. “ They are a journey to the two extreme poles of survival…this is a state of survival that the rich countries have forgotten, with one exception???----you win----Japan.” The some of survival can create a list of “elegant things”, and enjoy the “limpid spring,’ meanwhile the others, “he hilled himself…he could not stand hearing the word ‘Spring’”
ei Shonagon is a Japanese auther in eleventh century, who is the auther of The Pillow Book. With his professed interest in banality, Krasna shares Shonagon’s melancholy delight in ‘the contemplation of the tiniest things’, and her list of ‘things that quicken the heart’ in particular strikes the cameraman as an apt criterion for filming. The intense poignancy derived from heart-quickening thinks is in direct proportion to their triviality- the motley accumulation of sights and signs gathered by Krasna on his return to Tokyo includes, in random order, a woman chalking characters on the road, a cat peering over a parapet, a shop window display of a clarinet that plays itself, a poster with an owl on it, and a street fortune-teller, and the sense that, on another occasion, the contents of the list would have been completely different.
ei Shonagon’s elegant and evocative list, The Pillow Book, 1002 (italics ours): ‘Sparrow feeding their young. To pass a place where babies are playing. To sleep in a room where some fine incense has been burnt. To notice that one’s elegant Chinese mirror has become a little cloudy. To see a gentleman stop his carriage before one’s gage and instruct his attendants to announce his arrival. To wash one’s hair, make one’s toilet, and put on scented robes; even if not a soul sees one, these preparations still produce an inner pleasure. It is not and one is expecting a visitor. Suddenly one is startled by the sound of rain-drops, which the wind blows against the shutters.’
olitical and historical references
Kim Dae Jung
Krasna using the long shot focusing the young militants who are trying to gather signatures for supporting Kim Dae Jung. “On the other sidewalk the Left has the floor. The Korean Catholic opposition leader Kim Dae Jung—kidnapped in Tokyo in ’73 by the South Korean Gestapo—is threatened with the death sentence. A group has begun a hunger strike. Some very young militants are trying to gather signatures in his support. ”
In the South Korean presidential election, 1971, Kim represented the Democratic Party, challenging incumbent President Park Chung-hee of the Democratic Republican Party (South Korea). Following the election, Kim fled to Japan where he eventually began an exile movement for democracy in South Korea. With widespread allegations of corruption and manipulation of the results, Park turned his regime into a military dictatorship. Around noon of August 8, 1973, Kim was abducted by a group of unidentified agents. Later Kim was moved to Osaka and later to Seoul, South Korea. Subsequently Kim was released in Busan. He was found alive at his house in Seoul five days after the kidnapping.
Through this reference, we can see the Japanese starts to have reaction to foreign policy and indicate the Japanese affiliation of changing. This is because Japanese was influenced by the rise of a new postwar generation to leadership and policy-making position. The differences in outlook between the older leaders still in positions of power and influence and the younger generation that was replacing them complicated formulation of foreign policy.
Che Guevara
Che Guevara is a hero; his sprit influenced young people deeply. Meanwhile Japan is an open country, which is good at absorbing different culture. So when Japanese feel the society is unfair and poverty in their present, they begin to react like Che Guevara, just as what Che said, “Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.” It follows that people all around the world will always feel the oppression, the unfair lopsided world led by the United States and the imperishable worship to Guevara if the hegemony of the United States still exists. It is a lopsided world so the cosmopolitanism of Guevara has been able to spread. The world’s rebel hero——Guevara was born from American Power. The spirit power of this rebel hero will die together with American hegemony.
Left: “revolutionary purity” from Sans Soleil
Right: 1960 file photo Cuban leaders, including Che Guevara, in the middle of picture
“As for the students, some massacred each other in the mountains in the name of revolutionary purity, while others had studied capitalism so thoroughly to fight it that they now provide it with its best executives. Like everywhere else the movement had its postures and its careerists, including, and there are some, those who made a career of martyrdom. But it carried with it all those who said, like Ché Guevara, that they ‘trembled with indignation every time an injustice is committed in the world.’ They wanted to give a political meaning to their generosity, and their generosity has outlasted their politics. That’s why I will never allow it to be said that youth is wasted on the young. ”
Amilcar Carbral and Luis Carbral in Bijagos of Guinea Bissau
The film offer the idea that what evaluable for collective history might be nothing more than a cumulating of individuals’ memories and wounds. Relating to the progressive defection of Amilcar Cabral, the revolutionary legacy, who had united the independence movements of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau and won a guerrilla war against the Portuguese, the film shows the footage of a military award ceremony in which Amilcar’s half-brother Luiz is decorating Major Nino. “We are told that in order to interpret this film, we must move forward a year, when Nino will have deposed Luiz in a military coup, and we will understand that what looked like a moving affirmation of revolutionary solidarity was in fact a viper’s nest of bitterness and resentment. ’And so men parade their personal lacerations in the great wound of History.’
Film references
talker by Tarkovsky
“He showed me the clashes of the sixties treated by his synthesizer: pictures that are less deceptive he says—with the conviction of a fanatic—than those you see on television. At least they proclaim themselves to be what they are: images, not the portable and compact form of an already inaccessible reality. Hayao calls his machine’s world the ’zone,’ homage to Tarkovsky. ”
In Tarkovsky’s film, the Zone is a derelict landscape created by an alien landing and navigated illegally by the Stalker, who takes a scientist and a writer there in search of a room where whatever they desire can be granted. Both Zones are ‘non-places’ outside the normal laws of space and time, which map human desires, imagination or spirituality rather than the physical world.
What is documented here is a reworking of documentary’s relation to the real, and to experience through the profound calling into question of the viewing self. This different relation to the real is founded in an altered connection to indexicality and time, which passes through a dream space before it enters the “Zone”, this latter space marking a return to Tarkovsky, Stalker.
Left: Stalker Right: Sans Soleil
The video is well balanced with the audio: When there are abundant visual elements that audience need think about, music and sound effects will fade out consciously. Ordinary pipes, ruins, wastelands and buildings all turns poetically weird and terrified as crossing the entry to the next space at the real hand of Tarkovsky several simple montages can make excellent expression of the metaphor, which are more powerful and richer than other kinds of presentation. We see stalker and bedrooms that is ramshackle and black-and-white bedroom throughout the movie. As the symbol of family, wife and children are always obstructing stalker’s danger exploring, and become the only ones who comfort him after he finishes stalking and comes back. Behind the whole movie with abstract lines, this may be the biggest tension. Sans Soleil also follows the same pace of Stalker: a shot of three Icelandic children is showed as the beginning of movie, and it becomes end of movie eventually.
Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock
The idea at which Sans Soleil begins to disclose its own veil is its excursion into Vertigo. Krasna is obsessed with Vertigo as the only film ever to portray ‘impossible memory, insane memory’, and writes that he has seen it nineteen times. Making his pilgrimage to the sites where the film was made, and recalling Hitchcock’s original via a series of stills that are momentarily held and dissolved between his own footage, Krasna reworks Hitchcock’s narrative into a new story, and the character of Scottie (James Stewart) is recast as ‘Time’s fool of love’. This unveiling of appearances to reveal time at work in the representation of space may be logically extended to cover the perpetual geographical displacement enacted across Sans Soleil, which then emerges as one vast metaphor for the passage of time.
Left: still from Vertigo Right: Sans Soleil
La Jetee (The Pier)
In straightforward terms he is on the island of Sal, listening to radio Hong Kong, thinking back to when he was in Tokyo in winter, subject to these and other images that return unbidden via association with his present. We are beyond distanced contemplation of images that may or may not have been filmed by him, but we are also beyond flashback, neither seeing through his mind’s eye nor seeing images as testimony to his memory but, rather, we are told that the images are his memory. Time is more important than path, with concentric memories growing face on face, like a series of tree rings. Later on, indeed, San Soleil features a still from Vertigo, which shows the sequoia cut in Muir Woods, and then films the similar cut in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, which figures in La Jetee.
Left: La Jetee Right: Sans Soleil
As in La Jetee we see here an impossible memory, the only difference being the introduction of motion to the pictures we see and the fact that Krasna does not feature within these images to be looked at as the protagonist of La Jetee does. These memory images ay well function to point back to Krasna’s location at the time of writing but this position is constructed in the film as a visual and aural absence. Krasna’s memory, fashioned by film in every sense, opens out beyond himself in the absence of his physical presence.
In conclusion, in such a simple form, Sans Soleil covers and implies such a wide range of prospective, from the literature reference from poems by Tomas Stearns Eliot to the list by Sei Shanagon in the Heian period. Chris Marker bends the poems into the movie in order to reach the stream of consciousness. Using Eliot’s magpie poetic method, Chris Marker edits video clips consciousness. Like Sei Shanagon concentration to the details around her life, Marker also fixes camera to the little single details around him. In the point of view of the historical and political references from the kidnapping of Kim Dae Jung (who later become Korean president) to the quotes of Che Guevara, even to the Amilcar Cabral (who leads the independent movement of Cape Verde and guinea-Bissau). On one hand, these citations of history reflect the fact that Japanese started to have reaction to foreign policy and indicate the Japanese affiliation of changing, on the other hand, Chris Marker records the third world’s history that may be ignored by most of people. We also learned revolution is a long and hard way to realize the solidarity and independence. Moreover, The sequences in San Francisco references Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Marker’s own earlier film La Jetee. In addition, Hayao Yamaneko’s transformed images “the Zone” are homage to Stalker, a film by Andrei Tarkovsky. Krasna thinks his memory by reviewing films, exhibits himself in the absence of his physical presence.
Chris Marker is influenced by new form of art cotemporary. In the same era among late 19th and early 20th, artists such as Pierre Schaeffer, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and Gyorgy Ligeti no long just go for the appreciation and enjoyable, instead, they pursue the possibility of arts. For instance, etude aux chemins de fer by Pierre Schaeffer, it is the assemblage of various natural sounds recorded (originally on tape) to produce a montage of sound; Marcel Duchamp, the Dadaist and surrealist who start the point of performance art; and 4’33 by experimental composer John Cage in 1952, the song that have 4’33 long silence, which echoed in Sans Soleli with a 5 seconds black out in the beginning of movie. In addition, silence was an important structural element in some of the Sonatas and Interludes, Music of Changes and Two Pastorals. To some degree, the application of silence aims to let people to think.
In the process of producing Sans Soleli, Chris Marker tries to explore more and more possibilities of form of expression. The sense of illusion is created by unique edit, weird composition, surreal rhythm and philosophical thought. Through Chris Marker almost put no emphasis on any individual, he portrays Japan with his unique vision with an aesthetic perspective. Meanwhile, his closely observing Japanese culture and society and analysis the culture and society with personal and historical view, has a profound impact on film history. This invaluable film opens the door to impossible and extends imagination to an infinite extent. Sans Soleli is more than just a movie or documentary, it is an art expression of politics, history, literature and philosophy.
ibliography:
Chris Marker: Memories of The Future by Catherine Lupton
Cities In Transition –the moving images and the modern metropolis by Andrew webber and Emma Wilson
Time And The City: Chris Marker by Sarah Cooper
Reflections on Ash Wednesday and T.S. Eliot Poem by Jeff Goins
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/t-s-eliot
http://jeffgoins.myadventures.org/？filename=reflections-on-ash-wednesday-and-a-ts-eliot-poem
http://oedipa.tripod.com/eliot-2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am铆lcar_Cabral
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Kim_Dae-jung
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu铆s_Cabral
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/26/cuban_dissident_eloy_gutierrez_menoyo_dies_at_77/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4鈥�33鈥�