Last Year at Marienbad

1961 dream

Rating: 18/20

Plot: At a sprawling luxurious hotel, a man attempts to convince a woman that she needs to run off with him because they met and had an affair last year or some other time at the same place or maybe a different place.

First off, this is one of the most beautiful and most beautifully mysterious movies I've ever seen. Second off, it's definitely not for all tastes. For most, it might be frustratingly disconnected, exhaustingly redundant, and teasingly inconclusive. For me, this movie, with its gentle and repetitive narration, liturgical organ soundtrack, deliberate pacing, and and fragile textures is a hypnotic riddle from beginning to end and unlike anything else I've seen before. It was like falling asleep and waking up in Andre Breton's duffel bag or a haunted house of mirrors. Enigmatic and surreal, Last Year at Marienbad demands multiple viewings, but I'm almost positive that multiple viewings would do very little to help me unravel this bad boy. Ghost story? Sci-fi time travel nonsense? Esoteric romantic comedy? Murder mystery? It's gorgeous enough to be seen by everybody (shot by Peter Greenaway's cinematographer Sacha Vierny) and incomprehensible and pretentious enough to be loved by all!