Wow, I've never seen anything quite like it but I really didn't like it. After revisiting 8 1/2, exploring a bit of Godard, and now seeing this, I'm starting to think this era of surrealist French/Italian-centric cinema just ain't for me.
The film features 94 minutes of beautiful environments and cinematography, and some really wild editing, but there isn't really a linear plot, like...at all. The man begins trying to convince the woman they met at this building once a year ago, but she can't remember and doesn't want to accept it, then...that continues, for the ENTIRE movie. Literally nothing else happens. There is almost zero progression - it remains stagnant. He just carries on and on and on repeating himself for an entire film, while the rooms, and settings, and outfits change around them. Same conversation, different rooms, for an ENTIRE MOVIE.
Now, I was able to see the art within the structure of the film and the way the movie is almost mocking itself as you're watching it, almost in a Funny Games type of way. The opening 15 minutes were the strongest part of the film in my opinion, as it's the only segment we get that is separate from the repetition of the rest of it - however, what does the intro consist of? Well, it's a long, poetic, repetitive narrative about emptiness, and...REPETITION itself. So, as you're sinking into the somewhat torturous spiral that is the meat of the movie, you'll think back to the opening narrative, and realize that you are a part of it. Clever, yet hardly enjoyable to sit through.
In the end, the only real positive takeaways to me were the absolutely striking presence of Swiss tall man Sacha Pitoeff every time he was on the screen, and the sequences in which he played "the game he never loses" - I had to laugh a majority of the times he appeared because he was simply so intimidating it was iconic. Second, the first sequence in which large rooms of people were sort of freezing up and moving in portrayed slow motion while other people were moving in standard speed around them was especially impressive - I've never seen it done like that, it was as dreamlike as dreamlike sequences get.
Overall, a pretty boring film that takes what feels to me like an empty metaphor (I think that's intentional and that's why the opening narrative was about emptiness?!) and beats you over the head with it on purpose until you feel completely lost, and... again, I think that's the point, because loss seems to be a primary theme in the end too. Another thing you will have lost is your time, LOL - but I'm glad I saw it. It's definitely someone's art.
The film features 94 minutes of beautiful environments and cinematography, and some really wild editing, but there isn't really a linear plot, like...at all. The man begins trying to convince the woman they met at this building once a year ago, but she can't remember and doesn't want to accept it, then...that continues, for the ENTIRE movie. Literally nothing else happens. There is almost zero progression - it remains stagnant. He just carries on and on and on repeating himself for an entire film, while the rooms, and settings, and outfits change around them. Same conversation, different rooms, for an ENTIRE MOVIE.
Now, I was able to see the art within the structure of the film and the way the movie is almost mocking itself as you're watching it, almost in a Funny Games type of way. The opening 15 minutes were the strongest part of the film in my opinion, as it's the only segment we get that is separate from the repetition of the rest of it - however, what does the intro consist of? Well, it's a long, poetic, repetitive narrative about emptiness, and...REPETITION itself. So, as you're sinking into the somewhat torturous spiral that is the meat of the movie, you'll think back to the opening narrative, and realize that you are a part of it. Clever, yet hardly enjoyable to sit through.
In the end, the only real positive takeaways to me were the absolutely striking presence of Swiss tall man Sacha Pitoeff every time he was on the screen, and the sequences in which he played "the game he never loses" - I had to laugh a majority of the times he appeared because he was simply so intimidating it was iconic. Second, the first sequence in which large rooms of people were sort of freezing up and moving in portrayed slow motion while other people were moving in standard speed around them was especially impressive - I've never seen it done like that, it was as dreamlike as dreamlike sequences get.
Overall, a pretty boring film that takes what feels to me like an empty metaphor (I think that's intentional and that's why the opening narrative was about emptiness?!) and beats you over the head with it on purpose until you feel completely lost, and... again, I think that's the point, because loss seems to be a primary theme in the end too. Another thing you will have lost is your time, LOL - but I'm glad I saw it. It's definitely someone's art.