Shot entirely in still photographs and masterfully edited, La Jetee is both strikingly original and a typical example of the work of the Resnais-Marker-Varda group: a love story of nameless individuals existing outside time, set against a background of war and concentration camp horror, concerned with the problems of time and memory and the interaction of past and future.
Roy Armes, French Cinema, A.S. Barnes and Co., 1966
La Jetee is an intelligent, low-key film, a mere twenty-eight minutes long, a meditation on time and memory, that is intended to pose questions rather than give answers: after World War III a man is sent back in time, falls in love and witnesses his own death. This is shown entirely in black-and-white still photos, with narration. It was the basis for Terry Gilliam's film, Twelve Monkeys (1995), as well as the TV series of the same name created by Travis Fickett and Terry Matalis this year. The film and TV series tried to make details explicit that were only suggested in Marker's film and succeeded in being incoherent and rather bloated, compared to the spare elegance of La Jetee.
I have just about caught up with all three seasons (so far) of Simon Barry's Continuum, a Canadian series about time travel, and another attempt to understand the details and paradoxes of the subject. The first two seasons were fairly straightforward, with a police officer from the future chasing escaped terrorists into the present, teaming up with present-day police to stop the terrorists from changing the future; then things went a bit crazy in the third season, as multiple examples of individuals began to exist in different "timelines." Emily Fox's Hindsight this year on VH1 used time travel more effectively (perhaps because there has only been one season), by having a character, Becca, on the eve of her second marriage, travel back in time to just before her first marriage. Becca just stayed in her past, trying to change things for the better and contending with frustration; there was no attempt to move the narrative between times or explain paradoxes. There is a second season planned and we will see if Fox can continue with her admirable restraint.
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