Last Year at Marienbad

I can't tell you what this movie means, exactly, but I know I love it. Love is a strange word, though, because I think this movie is the closest thing I've seen to a literal nightmare since the Winkie's Diner sequence in Mulholland Drive. The film is flush with horror: the repetition, the pushing against implacable resistance, the games that cannot be won, all set in a hotel that clearly inspired The Shining. It creates within me the deepest sense of unease, and yet it's utterly beautiful at the same time. Love it.

A masterpiece with thousands of possibilities for interpretations.

In previous reviews I've used the word "ambitious". This film is the epitome of ambitious. It isn't for everyone but I loved it.

So what happened last year in Marienbad? I guess nothing, but does it even matter? This is one of those masturbatory arthouse movies where the characters are lost in the maze of the subconscious while trying to piece together blurry memories and escape from inconvenient truths. Despite the lack of any kind of payoff or even a final revelatory moment, I found the images alone so intriguing and intoxicating that they eclipsed anything else. The direction and cinematography are way ahead of their time, with a lot of sophisticatedly choreographed camerawork keeping the attention high despite the simple setting and the obsessive repetition of the same words and situations.

If only we could remember our original words.

I'm not particularly sure what this film was about (time? memory? lost love?) but it looked beautiful.

Difficult film, that requires definitely more than a single viewing at home over thousands of distractions.

The original title of the film is L'année dernière à Marienbad

This movie sucks. Don’t waste your time.

Troubling and visually stunning. Clearly influenced Kubrick.