One of the most fervent inquiries into time and memory ever recorded on film is to be found in Chris Marker’s ‘La Jetée.’ Completed in 1962, this piece is comprised entirely of still images, a series of fleeting instants through which a fractured narrative of love, loss, and recurrence flows. In the course of its twenty-eight-minute duration, Marker reverses the flow of film, marking instead the space between movement and stasis, between memory and projection.
The story unfolds in the aftermath of the third world war, where Paris is left in ruins and darkness. The scientists are attempting to develop the idea of time, trying to make contact with the past and the future in an effort to repair the broken present. Among the prisoners, one individual is chosen who has long been tormented by a memory of his youth—a woman’s face and a man dying on the observation pier at Orly Airport.
The Portrayal of Circular Narrative by Chris Marker
This circularity of La Jetee is observed in the fact that it becomes possible for us, the spectators, to trace the path of the hero from the past to the present and then to the future as a circular process that has the same end and start. This is represented in the fact that it is the same pier from where the hero’s memory of childhood begins that is where he dies. Similarly, his memory of seeing the death of a child is also where he dies.
In this closed loop, the lines of memory and destiny are blurred. It is in the science fiction element of this film, with its experiments and travel through time, that Marker has the framework upon which to explore human perception and the notion of images of the past being revisited in an attempt to discover meaning.
From Postwar Ruin to Timeless Reflection in the Film
Obviously, the first and most striking quality is its form, as the video moves through static images, broken only once by motion as the female opens her eyes. It is a brief moment, one that is almost impossible to discern, thus completely redefining the definition of life on film. Motion, when it finally happens, is nothing short of miraculous. Sound and voice are substituted for the obligatory dialogue. The voice is treated with a sense of scrupulous objectivity, and the complex sound of machinery, muffled voices, and echoes combines the narrative at the point where the outside world and the world of experience converge. The lack of verbal dialogue reinforces the perception of isolation. The man’s experience with the woman is expressed through glances and gestures, always extending beyond words. Their moment, so fragile and fleeting, becomes the only place where the flow of time opens to the warmth of human presence. The images of the face of the woman, bathed in soft light, eyes closed, and the faint movement of her hair, are indicators of an unattainable peace. When the man finally decides to return to the woman instead of staying with the beings of the future, who have promised him security, this is no act of heroism but of necessity. Love and memory have become intertwined with fate. La Jetee is part of a post-war tradition that doubts the idea of the continuity of history and identity. La Jetee is the product of a decade characterized by nuclear phobias and the repercussions of global warfare, a realization of the fragility of human civilization and the imagination’s ability to reach beyond it. The end of the movie, the closure, the ending, represents a complete closed form. The man running towards the woman at Orly is a point where time dissolves into recognition. The boy who witnesses the event, the man who remembers it, and the dying man on the pier are the same man. This is not a moment of resolution but of closure, indicating that the story is over. The role of his memory, the need for his return to that image, corresponds to the nature of memory itself. To remember is to relive what cannot be altered. The circular motion from past to present is at the same time the condition of human consciousness and its tragedy. La Jetee presents the extraordinary situation of the transformation of limitation into revelation.
