Sans Soleil

1983 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A woman reads from letters sent to her from a globetrotter. He meditates on time, space, and memory. Pretentiously.

Rich stuff here, really thick with ideas and visuals. This feels a lot like Herzog's Encounters or Fata Morgana, bizarro travelogues that showcase earth as alien territory. Here, there are mystical locales in Africa and Japan, bookcased by volcanic tragedy in Iceland. There's also an excursion to the streets of San Francisco and a mini-essay on Hitchcock's ideas about memory as seen in Vertigo. Kitty temples, zombie dancers called baby martians, pope exhibits, sex museums, sleeping passengers on boats, animal masks, blood gushing from giraffes, Pacman, the striking of streets to scare away moles, Japanese horror, wartime terror. It's the alien strange juxtaposed with the mundane. Combined with the voiceover ramblings and the synthesizer bleeps and bloops, the experience is really bizarre, almost surreal, but beautifully unique. The whole thing is poetic and rambling and almost overwhelmingly difficult, but it has a way of washing over you, sucking you in, and sticking with you. I watched this in installments, a lot of segments multiple times, and random bits keep creeping into my conscious thoughts. The experience is a dense and dreamy one, and I'm sure multiple viewings would unravel some of the mysteries. I plan on revisiting this one soon; however, it's that sort of film that most people would have problems getting through once.