In 1962, long before Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, Chris Marker created La Jetée, a remarkable short film about romance and postapocalyptic time travel. But unlike the hyperkinetic and color-saturated vision that followed in its footsteps, La Jetée is a testament to the power and beauty of minimalism.
There are no special effects in La Jetée: the entire story is told through a series of simple black-and-white photos accompanied by a male narrator. In an age when MTV and Hollywood action flicks routinely barrage viewers with 10 cuts per second, the dramatic power of stillness and a single voice has never been more pronounced.
While the film isn't likely to show up on late-night TV anytime soon, you can get a further sense of La Jetée's power in the photo-book version of the film from Zone Press publishers. Probably no other movie has ever been so suited for translation into print. Each two-page spread of La Jetée: ciné-roman contains still images from the film and the text of the narration in both French and English. Here you really can see Marker's exquisite techniques and the subtle character interactions. Zone Books has done a superb job of preserving the sense of fragmentation, fragility, and stark visual beauty that has made La Jetée a classic.
Thirty years after the film was made, we're not quite so consumed by fear and nightmare visions of a nuclear Armageddon. But the threat of annihilation still lurks in the back of our collective psyche as does AIDS, terrorism, the fear of displacement by machines, and anxieties about losing our history and humanity. La Jetée isn't just another save-the world scenario. It's a story of how love and eros can change everything.
Richard Kadrey
La Jetée: US$19.95. Facets Video: (800) 331 6197, +1 (312) 281 9075. La Jetée: ciné-roman, by Chris Marker: US$26.50. Zone Books, distributed by MIT Press: (800) 356 0343, +1 (617) 253 5641, fax +1 (617) 625 6660.
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