La Jetée (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

La Jetée (1962) -- C. Marker

I found a spare 30 minutes to watch La Jetee (and some related ephemera on the Criterion DVD) to commemorate Chris Marker's passing.  A series of still photographs conveys the narrative (with voiceover narration).  It is after Paris has been destroyed (by nuclear war?) and survivors are sheltered underground.  They begin experiments in time travel to find food, water, energy etc.  A man returns to the past, his own past, but as a stranger, a visitor.  He falls in love with someone he remembers seeing at a distance at the Pier at Orly Airport where he also saw a man die.  Later, people from the future help him to escape his present.  There is something about watching still photos (OK, mostly still) that creates calm and a sense of focused reflective attention -- this gives you time to process the associations that Marker's images elicit (if only Twelve Monkeys didn't get in the way, as interesting as it was).  Love, childhood, memory, animals, future, past, existence.