Music Banter - What's The Latest Film You Have Seen?

I watched L'annee dernier a marienbad and Inland Empire back-to-back, they make for a good double feature. Lynch was heavily influenced by Resnais' film for his own. They're each structured like dreams, so the narrative is fractured and secondary. Of course Resnais' film blows Lynch's out of the water. Marienbad is one of the most beautiful, hypnotic films I've ever seen. Among New Wave directors Resnais is more akin to Jaques Rivette than Godard or Truffaut--the more conventional names associated with the New Wave. Marienbad is an enigmatic film (Resnais even says it is a mystery), more like Celine et Julie vont en bateau than anything Godard ever did. Still Resnais has a lot in common with all the New Wave directors--the disjointed narrative, fast cuts and zooms mixed with long tracking shots through an elegant, mysterious European hotel. I highly recommend the film. You have to make your own sense of it. Resnais has repeatedly said that in Last Year at Marienbad moreso than in any other film it up to the viewer to determine what really happened "last year" at Marienbad (for a quick synopsis...the film is about a man who approaches a woman in a hotel lobby and tells her that they met each other last year, had an affair, planned to run away together and that she herself set this rendevous one year later. She objects and the film follows the man and woman, only named in the credits as 'A' and 'X', as he tries to convince her that they did in fact meet last year). Nothing in the film makes as much sense on the surface as that synopsis though, which is where the viewer must determine what actually happened. The film also contained some of the most beautiful black and white cinematography I have ever seen. Off the top of my head its only match would be Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev and maybe Truffaut's Les quatre cent coups. The film is set in a high class European hotel. The camera tracks the long corridors and the fancy molding on the walls. There is also a classic image from this film of the giant gardens of the hotel, where the people cast shadows but the neatly trimmed hedges do not...some great surrealist imagery. The actual layout of the hotel is geometrically impossible, something Resnais achieved by shooting at multiple chateaus across Europe and mixing the footage together. Corridors lead to empty corridors. The setting of a scene or a character's clothing will switch subtly mid-scene, characters will repeat conversations but little details will be switched--mimicing a dream. It's all very dizzying but the film is beautiful. Highest recommendation.

Inland Empire was clearly inspired by Marienbad but I don't like it nearly as much. Resnais' film is very much like a nightmare, a disturbing ghost story. Lynch's film is of course, exactly like a nightmare. Unlike Resnais film however, where every shot has a purpose, some of the images and sequences in Lynch's film seem unnecessary. At 3 hours long it had a lot more time to fill and I feel like some of the scenes veered off into strange and disturbing territory needlessly, though it does help to create that nightmare aesthetic, where not everything makes sense. So in that sense I understand the purpose of those scenes but it is hard to maintain interest over the 3 hour run time. Still not a bad film, watch it if you get the chance but don't go out of your way to see it. But do go out of your way to watch Marienbad.