Chris Markers Sans Soleil and Alain Resnais Nuit et Brouillard - Movie Review Example

Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (Sunless) and Alain Resnais’ Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) are perhaps two pieces of French cinema which are, withoutany doubt, classics. Both of them are not mainstream movies, dealing with very different subject matters on the surface, however, with certain similarities present between them. Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil is a travelogue of sorts set mostly in Japan and Guinea-Bissau, with some calling it a visual essay or a visual letter or a mockumentary, as it is mostly fictional. The director, Chris Marker, has tried to explore the themes of, among other things, time and memory, and how we humans perceive them. Adopting a light-hearted tone, Marker takes the unique approach of editing various video clips together, without adhering to time frame, and putting them together to describe the memories of the fictional Sandor Krasna, whose letters are read by a female narrator whose identity we never find out. Resnais’ Nuit et Brouillard, on the other hand, is based on the very real and macabre events of Holocaust. With most of the focus on the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp, the documentary which was filmed ten years after the Holocaust ended (1955), lays bare the atrocities committed therein. The male narrator simply relates the series of events that start from the rounding up of the people who were being sent to the concentration camps. The tone of the movie is, of course, very somber and serious throughout. In his movie, Chris Marker tries to explore how human memory works and how time and place have an effect on everything that later becomes history. It is an attempt on his part to take an interest in the banalities of life and, through them, try to explain human nature. The tone of the movie remains quite philosophical; though a lot of people are put off by it and they claim that Marker has ruined what could have otherwise been a great travelogue by using this tone, I disagree. The script of the movie, which are the letters read by the narrator, is crisp, innovative and it helps in driving the point home: the subjectivity of human memory and how we perceive time. It is a very unique approach and I agree that it is not palatable to everyone; however, it is unfair on the part of the critics to call it a work of pseudo-intellectualism. In Nuit et Brouillard, the script is very objective and it portrays the suffering of the prisoners of concentration camps in Nazi Germany. There are no personal observations made by the narrator; he recounts the events as and when they happened; it is quite austere. The human suffering as well as the human capacity to cause suffering are recorded in this documentary. Though the movie does not have a “different” feel to it in the documentary genre of movies, however, its subject matter is so sensitive and portrayed with such vividness that I feel that this movie is amongst the best in its genres. What makes it even more poignant is the fact that it was made merely ten years after the closing of the concentration camps and a lot of the perpetrators were not only still alive but also at large amongst the rest of the people. Having reached the conclusion that both the movies are exceptional, I cannot help but feel that there are certain factors that make these movies similar to one another. Incredulous as this may sound, despite the surface difference in the movies, I did find a similar theme to them. I did make a few observations while watching these movies about not only the similarities but the difference they contain. Sans Soleil has a very illusory effect to it. It feels as if the viewer is moving around in someone’s dream. Everything seems surreal, the people, the places, the events and the pictures; it is as if they have come from another world, or that one is seeing them for the first time. It is this play on the senses that adds to the allure of the movie. Nuit et Brouillard has an imagery that is so vivid that, while watching it, I felt as if I was at the place myself, as if all of it had happened to me. I not only felt for the prisoners of the Auschwitz, but felt one of them. This “in-your-face” effect of the movie enhances the experience, and the human emotions get involved more deeply with the subject matter, a subject matter that is very emotional to begin with. Marker gives his movie a very personal touch; he wrote the script himself and the resemblance between him and the fictional Krasna are apparent. I was clearly left with an impression that it is actually the thoughts and ramblings of Marker himself that are communicated to the viewer. Although Resnais was not ever a prisoner in any Nazi concentration camp, he was, however, reluctant to take up the project of directing the movie until Jean Cayrol was asked, and subsequently agreed, to write the script to Nuit et Bruillard. That is precisely what gives the movie its haunting realism and the empathy it invokes. Both are, in essence, personal accounts, albeit they are very different in nature, and the similarity does not end here. There is the question of technology and its uses that both the movies seek to explore. In Sans Soleil, technology is presented as a sign of changing times; old customs live side by side with technology for now, but slowly and surely everyone is being assailed with technologically advanced things and the allure is too much for them to let it pass. In Nuit et Brouillard, the macabre use of technology and experimentation is shown; the prisoners of the concentration camps are made into lab rats for the advancement of medical technology. It is important to note here that while watching the movies I was not left with the impression that there was any condemnation as such of technology found in them, however, they did try to explore the theme of technology versus humanity; the former by exploring how the cultural heritage of a country is slowly being discarded, and the latter by showing how low mankind can stoop to with the help of technology. On the topic of time Krasna quotes something very poignant: “Who said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to say that time heals everything except wounds.” It is a very novel idea for most of us who have been listening to the age old adage; I found myself amazed at first and then, as Krasna (or Marker) goes on, agreeing to this idea wholeheartedly. This is precisely what Nuit et Brouillard tells us. The concentration camps did close down, the prisoners freed and the perpetrators punished, however, the wounds created in the bodies and souls of the victims did not heal; they have not healed even to this day, where the children of the survivors still feel the horror of the camps. At the end of Nuit et Brouillard there was a warning given about how though the Nazi concentration camps have closed down there is still a need to keep a look out as it may happen again. To me it pointed out that the writer knew that all this that had happened, atrocious though it may be, still has a chance of happening again because that is how history, and humans, work. Sans Soleil gave me the same impression as well: things often change by not changing at all; we are often engaged in activities similar to our ancestors, though on the surface they appear different. Moreover, there was a factor of things appearing different than what they are that was explored in Sans Soleil. Only when the events are placed in perspective of events that they are followed by do we arrive at the truth. The tears of a Guinea-Bissau army official, thought to be tears of happiness and gratitude at being honored by the President, turned out, in reality, to be tears of bitterness at not being elevated to a higher honor for his services, something people came to suspect only when he imprisoned the President a year later and seized power for himself. The Nazis, whether those in positions of high powers, or the lowly kapos, did not take responsibility for any of their actions when they were brought to trial after WWII. When the Third Reich started rounding up its opponents and sending them into the “fog and night” to disappear, nobody suspected that it would culminate in something so horrendous and large-scale as the Nazi concentration camps, yet it did, and that is precisely what made the non-action or indifference of the lowly guards just as bad as the actions of Hitler and Himmler. Something that was clarified with time. The message is quite clear; it is important not to forget history, though we almost always do, as Krasna says “Who remembers all that? History throws its empty bottles out the window.” One is haunting and macabre; dead bodies being bulldozed, starving people being made to stand out naked in the cold, personals of the dead (including their hair) being stored and used, all this seems unreal yet it happened. The other is dreamlike and enchanting; there is needless killing and suffering in the world, yet there is always hope as long as there are people who are willing to fight for it. References: Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog). Alain Resnais. Argos Films, 1955. DVD. Sans Soleil (Sunless). Chris Marker. Argos Films, 1983. DVD. Read More