Sans Soleil

Marcissus5.0

Isn't it stupid to tell people not to look at the camera?I think it would be a good film to show to alien life, to say Here... this is what we Were and this is who we Are, our extended attempts to reconcile with ourselves, we simply cannot remember what we cannot remember, maybe you folk will have a better time of it than we do. The film itself feels alien, the places he visits, the things he observes, even the people he meets. . I don't know how Marker managed to film everything presented here so beautifully, but at times it feels like the air has changed colour, like the universe has accidentally been knocked by something passing by and everything is off by a degree or two, and now these images and sounds are just the slight variations that are not correct but basically correct. You honestly never see films like this, every time I revisit it I can't believe how captivating it is.It is hard to describe. Faulkner said it best when he said words don't ever fit even what they are trying to say at. and i don't think my brain can describe what the images here mean to me in any communicable way, and that is fine. that is fine with meHe asks how do humans remember things without filming it? well, you don't... life goes on, an aggregate of last moments

Evan5.0

My main source of inspiration from the documentaries of Werner Herzog, Agnès Varda and now Chris Marker is that they all seem to represent the prospect that cinema isn’t such a challenge to create, implying that if you’re fortunate enough to simply own a camera, you too can make a film. This ‘do it yourself’ sentiment gives me much hope for the future — the idea that if every pitch I ever made went hideously wrong I could journey out into the world armed with nothing but a camera, intentions focused solely on showing this global carnival in motion. Like Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, Sans Soleil quickens the heart with its cerebral dissection of passing human beings, all captured by the wandering vision of a single lens; a lone eye which photographs the world as if it were no more than fragmented memories. The way Marker takes the banality of everyday life and reworks it into a collective philosophical purpose is miraculous; a train of thought heading one-way to an alien planet resembling a picture not far from our own. The human elements of Planet Earth are essentially turned into a David Attenborough documentary, a travelogue disguise hiding acid-trip digressions that equal the greatest intellectualisms of Godard. Marker famously said he made it intending it as a home movie, but upon watching it’s impossible to deny that this is a film for the entire world. One of the greatest documentaries I’ve ever seen.

HeHateCans1.0

It brings me no joy to declare that I loathed a film generally considered to be a masterpiece. But boy did I loathe this.Marker seems to be the celebrated cinematic incarnation of my freshman year roommate. You know the type, the prematurely cynical philosophy major who says things like "History only tastes bitter to those who expected it to be sugar coated." Or who says of censorship "it points to the absolute by hiding it - that's what religion has always done," or calls Pac-Man "the perfect graphic metaphor of man's fate."Sheesh.I'll give the film credit for having having an unintentionally appropriate title though, since nothing here was particularly enlightening.