quinimdb "Last Year at Marienbad" is the most enigmatic film that I have ever seen. I don't know if there is a "correct" interpretation of this film. The editing of the film make any sense of time irrelevant. Some scenes repeat, cut in without context, others replay with entirely different scenarios. The long, slow tracking shots, the muted dialogue with other people besides the main three, the way the people around them will suddenly stop moving to show the importance of the situation to the characters, and the soundtrack done mostly with organ and piano, truly create a unique and gloomy atmosphere.I am convinced the whole film takes place entirely in the characters' memories, but I can't really figure out which one, or if it's just all of them. It is unclear whether the lady, who is unnamed along with the rest of the characters, is alive or dead. The set design seems to loop in a never ending labyrinth, like the memories of the characters. I'm pretty sure that the story is told from the main three characters' perspectives, and they are each remembering what they've lost with each other, while the woman still can't decide if she made the right decision regarding whether to leave the man she is with for another, no matter what decision she did end up making (which I still can't quite decipher). This is simply my interpretation, but this interpretation (and all others) are truly irrelevant. I feel the main purpose of this film is not to simply tell a story, but evoke the emotions that these characters feel. It's a tough film to get into, but once you're into it it proves to be incredibly immersive. Eventually, we begin to feel what these characters do. We feel the loss, regret, and how close they were to love. But now this fading memory just feels like a dream, or a nightmare.

federovsky When they fail to see themselves as part of it, post-structuralists are missing the big structure. A film (or its creator) that aims to be so sophisticated that it can't be understood is only hiding its bourgeois banality beneath the surface. Let them, that's the art. This film is a game with no definitive solution, but by no means vacuous on that account. The purported vacuum is actually crammed with substance as the film plays on unreliable states of mind - memory, doubt, distrust, raising questions of sincerity, honour, even sanity.Superficially we have memory as the distance between two people. From evidence in his other work, it's tempting to assume that writer Robbe-Grillet intended the Stranger to be a kind of impostor. The Stranger describes details of events that he cannot know about, such as the woman's movements in her room. He spins an impromptu story about the figures in the statue and their dog. But the deception could equally be on her side - if she is afraid to remember, blocking an unpleasant memory.From another perspective, the man doesn't exist at all - he emerges from whispers seeming to seep from the fabric of the building itself. Fading in and out and repeated, these words are not of human origin, but brought into being by the memory of material things. Conjured into existence, Adam and Eve-like, they find themselves clinging to the worlds of their own phantom memories, his according to his desires, hers according to her fears, both of which displace reason or are displaced by reason. Underlying it all is the paranoia of uncertainty and lies, of not possessing, not winning. Built on this unreliable foundation, the past is born of a fabrication and elaborates gradually into something real. Memory can convince, as much as it can cast doubt.Just as the husband - a kind of magister ludi - cannot lose the game, the film also has things its own way, presenting two different realities like composited layers. Robbe-Grillet must have wanted these layers to clash like rocks, with percussive, discordant sounds effects, our illusions and prejudices fed by the uncertainty. Resnais, a humanist, made them blend serenely into each other, unable to resist reconciling the absurdity with some psychological sense and shape according to which the Stranger is sincere, the woman vulnerable.The psychology is largely environmental, everyone is reduced to a posture, turning into the statues that surround them, rigid with the lie of excessive formality, frozen by phatic conversation that is deliberately meant to avoid meaning. They shy away from the corporeality that implies baser qualities as they play the sophisticated game that has become their life.A game with no solution, a film with no key, ought to be quite disappointing. But existence never did have any clear answers. The fascination of it is in the uncertainty, and here, in the ambiguity.

boydwalters-60323 I saw this when I was a teenager and didn't know what the fuss was about and had a feeling it was pandering to people who like to think they are clever ... I watched it again last night, 40 years later as I thought maybe I was too young and had missed something ... I hadn't Good Points ... Its quite nicely filmed, but how could you go wrong in such sumptuous surroundings ... Delphine Seyrig was an amazingly interesting and beautiful woman, although she hasn't reached her peak in this ... There are no more good points The writing and direction are both stilted and heavy handed in their determination to be obtuse ... Their arrogance and self importance literally drips off the screen ... Compare this to the films of Cocteau who was a true talent ... Unfortunately some films have always been bolstered by the faux intellectual bourgeoisie and this is one of the major players in that category ... It is of course complete and utter nonsense

SeaHorseMafia I have been awaiting to see this for so long and now finally did, it wasn't anything like I expected. So abstract, so unique, so layered and so experimental in many ways. It's just so over-whelming really. There are so many aspects of this movie that just baffle me in a away that won't leave me confused, but over-whelms me with different perspectives. Like how the people freeze all of the sudden, the dialog is cut off but we can see their mouths still moving and a lot more. There are many, many different analysis of the movie, and I don't agree or disagree with any of them. Only one I do agree (in some way), that they are all dead, in a limbo. That makes, at least IMO, kinda sense. But I don't agree with the people who say that there's nothing to get (I sort of agree who say the film is satirizing itself though), that it's confusing to the point, you shouldn't know what it's about. I think that's just a cheap excuse to not understanding the movie or not wanting to analyze this. Saying this film doesn't have a meaning is simply dumbing the movie down a lot. Then, what is this movie in my opinion about? Well, I think this movie is about sub-consciousness story-telling. What does that mean? It's a term I have some up with, it's a kind of story- telling that makes the audience make up the story them self, in their sub-conscious. We are given so little about the story, that we make our own mind what is the story about. We decide did they meet, we decide what did the people say (when the dialog was cut off) and we decide how it ended. Alain Resnais himself said that everybody has to make their own mind about the story. This could be so abstract it's satirical in a way. And maybe Resnais wanted it to be almost a parody of itself, by being so surreal and impossibly to understand fully, maybe. I don't want to think like that, to me that would take way a lot of this movies appeal. It's meant to be understood, but it's meant to be understood for many angles. So, I guess it could be a parody. But it also kinda makes fun of the creativity that wasn't in main-stream Hollywood at that time. How creativity is dead in films now. One guy here in IMDb said it the best about this movie, something about how the woman represents current film-making and how "she" can't remember her golden days. That was pretty spot on. A lot of people hate this film. I can understand it, it's not for everybody, because there is no clear answer anything nor a clear story. If you don't like experimental film, this isn't for you. If your looking for something new, something that's trying to invent how you see movies in a different way, this is for you. To some people it's a mystery (actually to everybody pretty much) and a lot of people don't like the ambiguity of the story. It's a kind of movie that respects it's audience, nothing telling them everything, but respecting the audience to make up their own mind. And I understand that some of you don't like that at all. To some it's simply not "fun". And I understand that. But how can't you love the cinematography, the sets and the unique decisions in direction and the over-all uniqueness?