Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

valadas This movie begins by an unusual narrative process: a woman tells us about what a traveler thinks, says and films while travelling from one country to another although focusing himself mainly in Japan. His views are very personal and subjective, poetical and philosophical but I doubt that they are shared by most viewers. The movie shows us several scenes of Japan, Cape Verde, San Francisco, Guinea Bissao and Iceland trying to establish some parallels. The only positive aspect is that some of these images are interesting and even beautiful.

MartinHafer If you look through the reviews here on IMDb for this film, you'll find quite a few that praise it and you'll find a bunch that thoroughly hated it. You can place me in the latter group. This same thing could be said about the director's short film "Le Jetee"- -folks think it's brilliant and artsy or folks think it's crap. I'll tell you what I saw and you can make your own decision--this way at least you cannot say I didn't warn you.The film plays like a travelogue done by someone with a severe head injury. You see lots of lengthy and seemingly random footage from around the world (with an emphasis on Japan) and a narrator drones on and on about nothing in particular. As for the footage, despite being in color it's rather grainy and generally uninteresting. It's also accompanied by electronic music that generally is annoying and I think it was honestly meant to be annoying. And, this goes one for over 100 minutes. I'll be honest. I stopped watching this one after a while--and that's saying a lot considering I almost never bail on a film. Additionally, I've probably reviewed at least a couple thousand films and rarely have I felt like I wasted my time more than with this one.

Jackson Booth-Millard Featuring in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die was this film, I did not understand what the title meant, alternatively called Sunless, and I certainly did not know anything about prior to reading the book, but that's what made it more worth trying. Basically this is an experimental documentary from the thoughts of a woman travelling, meditating and expressing herself in beautiful and distinct parts of the world. We see her thoughts, images and scenes mainly in parts of Japan and Guinea-Bissau, but also with parts of Iceland, Paris and San Francisco, and apparently it is her readings with the cameraman following her routes. The English version is narrated by Alexandra Stewart. There is no story as it is more thought of as a documentary, but with the element of thoughts and ideas throughout the narration it can be seen as some kind of travel guide, or rather a travelogue from the narrator's point of view. You may get a little lost with what the narrator is saying about whatever you are seeing, but what makes the film work is all the fascinating scenery and brightly coloured imagery throughout wherever the camera takes us, so for that it is a worthwhile documentary. Very good!

chaos-rampant Upon a rewatch, it's still difficult as ever for me to write something about this film. All that can be said seems to be incorporated in the text itself, perhaps because it's futile, incommunicable to consciously attempt a description of consciousness.Two facets of consciousness at play here, both the filmmaker's.One is formed in the camera, by the powers of perception, and resembles how we process the world with the eye. Where do we begin a shot, where do we end it, and what kind of life have we seen inbetween? Howevermuch Marker sought out his images or simply happened upon them, the camera here orders the world into form, by the act of seeing it. We see African girls stare into the camera or consciously make effort to avoid returning the gaze, which makes me think that perhaps Dziga Vertov was chasing after a chimera. Is life ever caught unawares by cinema? The other is the consciousness of Marker's mind given to us as voice-over, which interprets, contextualizes, narrates these images, humorously or poignantly contrasts them. With this devastating power of the mind in effect, the earlier perception of the world is transformed into memory, a distorted reality recalled fragmentary upon which meanings are projected, a "Zone". Faces, places, deserts, all these now become characters in this narrative that comemmmorates their existence. "He wrote me..." then becomes the mantra that invokes them in the mind, and like the ancient chronicler's "once upon a time", an attempt to instill a distance of time.But the problem of consciousness remains. How much of what we see describes the world as it is, how much is in and of the mind? Which is to ask, where do all the formations of life begin, the images we use to describe it? This problem Godard inherited from Chris Marker for his best films (yet to come in '83), a solution perhaps being impossible. But it's in the pursuit, perhaps unintentionally, that this old chimera of the philosopher is delineated for me.Witnessing how Marker's consciousness continuously assaults and intrudes upon the reality of what is filmed, I take away two things; that this constant annotation with a poetry of words suggests that a poetry of images alone is inadequate, which is a failure of Marker's faith in cinema, secondly that this overflow of information, supposedly the film's strong card, impedes a true perception of what is presented to us.As an object of meditation, Sans Soleil is impossible but also probably not indended as such. There's no sacred space for the concentration of the mind here because we inhabit Marker. But if we come to it to "broaden our horizons" it has the power to pry us open. And if we have clawed our way out of the world of dualities, which Marker delves here, or have seen how inherently meaningless the quest for meaning is, like the mind the film is something to be transcended then.