La Jetée (Marker, Korea, 1962) – Analysis Sheet for Evaluative Commentary
Part 1: Brief Reference
| What did you like about the film? – The narrative, tone and full-circle ending. | What didn’t you like? – The use of still frames as opposed to traditional filming. |
| What ideas could you use? Narrative or style? – Narration, darker themes, an established darker tone. | What ideas won’t you use? Why? – The still frames and subject of time travel, the stills would likely be distracting and take away from the narrative and a time travel plot may become over-complicated. |
Part 2: In-Depth Study – Narrative
| Narrative Feature | Example | Your own example |
| Establishing protagonist – what information do we find out? How is it conveyed? | Introduced only in narration – first in third person as “a man marked by an image”; then in first person -memory of incident at the airport. We don’t see him until the first experiment is shown. This shows how core the act of remembering is to his identity – indeed we find out very little about him (he remains nameless) apart from his ‘remembering’ (even when he is travelling in time). | When the airport is first seen, it is stated that parents would take their children there to see the planes depart. The younger version of the man is then seen, accompanied by his mum and dad. This suggests to the audience that he had a strong relationship with his parents prior to the war. |
| Establishing other characters – what information do we find out? How is it conveyed? | The Woman is the first person we see (“the only image to survive the war”) – and she is defined only by the fact the narrator remembers her. Feminist critics may comment on the fact she barely seems to exist outside the experiences of the narrator and her growing belief in him. | The quote “some believed themselves to be victors”, in reference to the survivors of WW3, connotes that nobody actually “won” the war and the presumed winners are merely the only survivors left besides those taken prisoner. |
| Establishing location (time and place) – what information do we find out? How is it conveyed? | We are told immediately that the location is Paris. The bombed out wreckage of the city (real WW2 images) don’t immediately establish that this is the future until the narrator mentions radiation. The underground location beneath the Palais de Chaillot is shown by intercut images of broken cherubs and other sculptures. | When the location of Paris is established, it is stated that the majority of the world was uninhabitable due to the radioactivity. This gives the audience reasoning why there is a very small number of survivors left in the post-apocalyptic version of the world. |
| Creating Enigmas – what are they? How are they created? | The image the narrator obsesses over is the central enigma: who is the man he witnesses dying? How does he die? Who is the woman? The still images and voiceover powerfully evoke the nature of memory. | What other questions are posed throughout the narrative? In the brief time spent in the future, we only see the faces of the characters surrounded by darkness. This creates the question of what exactly did the future look like? |
| Narrative binary oppositions | The ‘Living Present’ vs Past/Future. As the film progresses, what constitutes the ‘present’ (for the protagonist) seems to shift from his dystopian subterranean society to the ‘past’ of pre-apocalypse Paris. This is conveyed by the faster rhythm of the montage and the sequence (18:00-18:49) where the images almost become like traditional cinema. | The past and present versions of the protagonist – when he is introduced as a boy, he is an innocent child who has not had any implicated traumatic experiences. However, by the time we see him in the post-apocalyptic future, he has seen a man (later revealed to be himself) get killed, as well as experiencing a third World War. |
| Crisis – how was this conveyed? | Is it the first experiment? The moment the man spots the woman from the airport? Or is it when the future society offers him the chance to escape to the future? | What do you think is the crisis point? How does this affect the rest of the narrative? – I think the crisis point is when the man returns from the future, and we find out the scientists were never planning to keep him alive. This affects the remainder of the narrative as he is then left with only two options – travel through time again or die. |
| Resolution – is it closed or open narrative? | The narrative is closed – but it is also in a loop: the narrator is both the dying man and the child watching the scene. This ‘time paradox’ has inspired films as diverse as The Terminator and Looper (as well as 12 Monkeys which is almost a remake). | What do you think about the end? Is it closed – or endlessly circular? – I agree that there is no open ending as the man clearly dies, however the conclusion is full circle as it ends where it begins, leading directly into the events of the film again and again. |
Part 3: Meaning and Effect
| What did you think was the intention of the filmmaker(s)? Intellectual message? Emotional response? Everyone is trapped in their time – they cannot escape it, even through memory. It is also about concept of photography and cinema itself, trying to ‘freeze’ time with images despite time always being in motion. | How was this achieved? The use of photomontage separates each frame of the story into a frozen image – even though these are joined together using traditional narrative film techniques such as voiceover, dissolves, fades and music. As the man begins to ‘live’ more and more in the ‘past’ with his lover, the space between these frames speeds up to resemble ‘motion picture’ speed at one point. The stuffed animals in the museum are also ‘frozen’ in a single moment. Your own idea: Perhaps the fact that in the post-apocalyptic earth, other humans are taken prisoner and are experimented on makes a point of how humanity may behave in a real-life dystopia. This is supported by the use of real locations such as Paris, creating a sense of verisimilitude. |
| Aesthetic binary oppositions The use of still photo images are combined with traditional narrative cinematic techniques that bring them ‘to life’… until the moment around 18:00 when they flow together. | Effect of these oppositions? Shows the intensity of emotion the narrator feels with his lover: like he is finally ‘living’ in moving time rather than a series of frozen, separated moments. Your example: The clear imagery of the past and present juxtapose the darkness and ambiguity of the future scenes, emphasizing the fact that nobody knows what the world will look like in the future. |