Love letters to worse worlds, #1: La Jetée
A love letter to a short film made entirely of still images
“They are without memories, without plans. Time builds itself painlessly around them. Their only landmarks are the flavor of the moment they are living and the markings on the walls.”
La Jetée (1962), Dir. Chris Marker | France. Most commonly known, if known at all, as the film that inspired 12 Monkeys (1995) starring Bruce Willis. It is a short film (28 minutes) made up (almost1) entirely of still images. It is easily, as one of my favorite Letterboxd reviews calls it, “the best powerpoint in the world.” Brief and devoid of the motion of a film camera, Marker stunningly tells the story of romance and time travel in a post-apocalyptic world through photographs and voiceover alone. It’s pieces of art like these that come to mind whenever a filmmaker wants to, say, go on a self-righteous diatribe about how movies should be allowed to be 4 hours long. La Jetée is sci-fi, but not quite; romantic, but not quite. It is something else entirely that I can only describe as the closest I’ve ever seen a film come to being a poem. This short film is the reason I ever started caring about apocalyptic and dystopian stories in the first place. I rewatch this at least once a year. It's astounding how a short film made up of black-and-white images can move me to tears every single time. I watched this for the first time years ago in film school, and I've been chasing this type of feeling and story ever since. It is the blueprint of its kind.
Viewing Notes: I’ve been able to find the English-narrated version on YouTube in the past, but now I’m not finding it. (Frustrating, since the narrator who does the English version is perfect.) Maybe it’s because they want you to rent it now on Am*zon Prime. For now, I’ll link to the only full version I can find on the internet, which is narrated in French with English subtitles.
If you watch, look for the subtle moment where movement was sparingly used.