Level Five (1997)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Level Five (1997) – C. Marker

Chris Marker’s essay films are very heady stuff.  He follows a stream of consciousness, riffing on a particular theme but allowing for digressions that take in his favourite themes, cats and movies.  But always his films focus on memory and the motivated desire to remember or to forget.  His most famous essay film is Sans Soleil (1983), which focuses in part on Japan, as does Level Five – but most people know Marker (if they know him at all) as the director of La Jetée (1962), a science fiction short that impressionistically ponders about time and memory (and was the basis for Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, 1995).  Level Five blends a focus on the internet and the knowledge society with an examination of the Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II.  Catherine Belkhodja plays Laura, a computer programmer tasked with designing a strategy game replicating the battle.  She speaks directly to the screen about her research into the history of war as well as her relationship with her offscreen colleague (who must be Marker himself, narrating portions of the film in his native French).  The facts we learn about the Battle of Okinawa are horrifying – large numbers of civilians committed suicide as the American troops approached or were killed by their loved ones if they were too young/helpless to kill themselves – but it is Marker’s queries about how such events are remembered (or repressed) that resonate most deeply.  So, again, the conceit of the film seems largely just a shell to allow Marker to freestyle his ideas about memory and the human experience, sad and terrible and unjust as it may often be.  And although we often see Belkhodja speak directly to the camera in an informal pose, Marker’s skill as an editor and a manipulator of images (his Macintosh computer is acknowledged in the final credits) means that the film is never boring or static – he takes us on a journey through (presumably found) footage and well-chosen discussion points by various talking heads (such as Nagisa Oshima), all aided by 1997-era computer graphics.  Yet, still this film seems ahead of its time and I lament the loss of Marker in 2012 at age 91. Who is his heir in this genre of experimental essay film-making?