遍野废墟,末世凄凉。男主人公(达沃斯·哈内赤 Davos Hanich饰)成为核战爆发后少数存活下来的人类。他幼年时梦中总是目睹一名陌生男子的死亡,这也使得他成为了时光旅行的实验品。他被送往核战爆发前夕的过去,他在堤岸上遇见一位女子(海伦·夏特兰 Hélène Chatelain饰),并且爱上了她。当实验快结束时,他又要被送往躲过浩劫的未来。但是他拒绝了这个机会,势要与自己心爱的女子在一起。然而到最后,他才恍然发现,幼年时常梦见的死亡,原来正是自己。
这部由新浪潮左岸派代表人物克里斯·马克执导编剧的科幻先锋派短片《堤》,是科幻片历史中的一座里程碑。全片用完全静止的画面,模拟人类对往事的印象,讲述一个世界末日后的故事。简洁有力的音效氛围,流畅凝练的剪辑镜头,配上如诗如梦的旁白语言,一段梦中破碎的记忆被描画得触目惊心。
前注.一篇极个人、且松散的观后感。观者自辨。
喜欢的人对我说:好啊,有机会一起去(博物馆)吧……像《堤》里一样。于是我看了这部短片。
短片很美。电影的一大魅力,部分正来自于所有静止图像的连续播放与集合,但是“幻灯片图文解说”的形式,让这一生效过程变得更明显、更可见了。
导演的注视、男主人公的注视...所有的注视都很美。回忆也很美,但回忆只是一帧帧碎片,尽管在故事中,人似乎可以借由某种方式回到过去、参与过去,但导演仍然借表达的形式彰显了回忆的不可延续与不可追溯。
男子的最后一死是逻辑必然的死。回忆不可回,否则又何须费力穿梭,去躲过不可躲过的未来呢。
对于现实之中的你我,当下难以抓住,但至少可以试着去抓住。未来最不可琢磨也最美好的地方,就在于其可能性。而回忆最美好也最令人叹息的,就在于回忆不可回吧。
回忆正因为永远在对岸,在堤上,才让人可以轻松看待。就如同王维的诗歌所言,「隔浦望人家,遥遥不相识」,那对岸的风景人事,就留在对岸好了。叹息也是美的。
影像中,回忆如普鲁斯特的童年碎片般定格、散落,男女主人公的博物馆相遇是快乐最高点。人生中最富希望时也最痛,悲恸是短促的沉默和情人脸上未解的困惑。记忆结成莫比乌斯环,抖落时间中穿梭流浪的你我。
好啊,有机会一起去博物馆吧……像《堤》里一样。
Memory and photographic image :
Revisiting Siegfried Kracauer’s essay Photography with La Jetee
In this paper, I will focus on the distinctions and relations Siegfried Kracauer draws between memory, memory image and photography in his essay Photography, and show why, for him, it is important to maintain such distinctions and remain critical to photography. Then, by using Chris Marker’s short film La Jeteeas a typical experimental practice that integrates fragmented images to create new memory, I will show how Kracauer’s idea can be embodied in media objects, and reconcile Kracauer’s seeming self-paradoxical claims on photography and visual culture.
In photography, Kracauer emphasizes the differences between the nature of memory and that of photography, as “memories are retained because of their significance for that person”and “photography grasps what is given as a spatial and temporal continuum.” Comparing to photography’s record, “memory’s record is full of gaps” spatial-temporally: memory is not a spatial continuum because its “image” is fragmented and re-constructed based on the object’s significance to the person; memory is not a temporal continuum since “memory does not pay much attention to dates” that it skips time and place objects from different linear points of time on a same “surface” based on their importance to consciousness. However, from the point of view of memory, photography is partly consists of “garbage” irrelevant to the representation of consciousness. Memory-image can be understood as the visual component of memory; one shouldn’t confuse memory-image with memory itself, since memory is the multi-sensorialtotality that consists of visual data and that of other senses.
How does photography separate from memory-image, thus with memory in general? Does it prevent memory-image from functioning, or does it serve as a gateway to enter the dimmed areas of human remembrance? For Kracauer, in short, the liveliness of photography is determined by the consciousness that recognizes it, and “the more consciousness withdraws from natural-bonds, the more nature diminishes.”By “nature,” Kracauer is referring to the irreducible actual experience or history that the photography represents, as exemplified in the example of the grandma, in which the strength of the bond between grandma’s photography and children is determined by their actual memory of her. Photography, though itself merely a visual representation functions according to spatial-temporal relations, has the potential to evoke one’s memory of an object. However, photography can also be the death of memory, as “the flood of photos sweeps away the dams of memory.”In circumstances when memory precedes photography, photography acts like a reminder, a gateway toward the relating piece of memory across time and space; in situations when photography precedes memory, or there is no accessible previous memory that consciousness can relate photography to, photography acts like a strict manifestation of the real that the spatial-temporal relations it depicts dominate one’s imagination of history. Even in the first circumstance, photography has, to a certain extent, a destructive potential of memory since photography might replace memory’s integrity, turning it into a deviant of itself. To conclude, photography for Kracauer, in general, is the death of memory and its memory image, though it has a little potential to evoke the actual memory.
Comparing to photography, Kracauer seemed to believe in the potential of film, as he says “the capacity to stir up the elements of nature is one of the possibility of film.”Now, I will turn to Chris Marker’s short film La Jetee to analyse how this potential is realized. La Jetee, with its use of moving image in contrast to still image(photography), disjunctive editing and seemingly paradoxical narrative, blurs the line between memory and imagination, breaks the linear way of seeing history and offers a rich understanding on the intertwining relations between photographic image and memory.
La Jeteeis an experimental short film by French new wave director Chris Marker. It is a 30 minutes long “narrative slide show” consists mostly of still images, or photography, with an exceptional 8 seconds moving image. The story is set over the ruins of the third world war in Paris. The fascist regime won the war and reigns Paris with terror. The protagonist, a imprisoned man, is selected for a time travel experiment to obtain precious resources for the regime from past and future. The experiment operates on specimen’s bonds toward their memories and abilities to imagine----the reason that the man is selected since he has incredibly strong attachment to his childhood memory of a woman’s face and a man’s death at the airport. The film’s narrative time focuses on the course of the man’s investigationinto his memory, or perhaps imagination, under heavy surveillance of theexperimenters. The man revisits his childhood memories and relives his life with the woman of his dream. As he dives deeper into his memory-dream with her, the experimenter increases the dosage of shots. After the man is sent back and forth into the future and finally has the chance to be with the woman, he witnesses, or experiences, his own death.
The moment I want to focus on lasts from 18’50’’ to 19’50’’. The first 40 seconds of this moment is an assemblage of ten different photographs of the woman lying on her side in sleep. The camera takes the point of view of the man, as if he is lying before her and looking at her closely. These photographs’ varied camera distances and different duration times suggest the camera, and so the man, sees her in a intimate motion as he himself is lying on their shared soft bed. The fade-in and fade-outs between the photographs also contribute to the feeling of motion, though we know clearly that this is merely an assemblage of still images. When we reach to 19’34’’, the one and only 8 seconds moving image in the entire film appears--the documentation of the moment the woman opens her eyes. This is a crucial moment. If all the still images(photographs) before this point represent the man’s memory-images, this piece of moving image is trying to suggest that memory itself bursts out from this singular moment, breaking the shackle of any representation and shows its pure and clear form.
However, if we take a step back, reflect on how we arrived at this thought and think of the question “does photography generate memory, or does memory generate its photography,” we will see the underlying gap within this claim. From the base level, we are looking at nothing else but a sequence of photographs taken by Chris Marker. When Marker was interviewed by Libérationon the production of La Jetee, he said “It was made like a piece of automatic writing. I was filming Le Joli mai, completely immersed in the reality of Paris 1962, and the euphoric discovery of “direct cinema” (you will never make me say “cinema verité”) and on the crew’s day off, I photographed a story I didn’t completely understand. It was in the editing that the pieces of the puzzle came together, and it wasn’t me who designed the puzzle. I’d have a hard time taking credit for it. It just happened, that’s all.” Marker’s response suggests without doubt that for him the photographs precede his own memory in La Jetee, as the narrative was “pieced together” after the photographs were taken. However, once the narrative is established, it gains a life of its own. The man in the film generates the memory-images from his own memory, and the photographs that the viewers see are direct representations of his memory-images created by the film maker. In this sense, the originality of the man’s memory is desired by both the viewers and the film maker, as the film maker creates the montage of still images for the man’s memory to dwell on and reveal itself. The man’s memory structurally exists at the crossroad of this “co-desire” and reaches its extreme clearing when the moving image occurs, as if the man’s memory of the woman is so strong that it pierces through the photographic surface and illuminates itself. Thus, the relationship between memory and image(photography) is not a simple causation; instead, as exemplified by La Jetee, they are closely intertwined as the desires of the film maker, the viewers and the man unite to nurture the liveliness of the man’s memory towards to woman of his dreams through images’ mediation.
How is a sequence of photographic montage different from a singular photograph in terms of memory? For Kracauer, the singular photograph prevents memory from functioning because it is impenetrable by the actually history that it dominates what is understood as real, and it “attempts to banish the recollection of death”to grant eternity to the object. Photographic montage, with its motion and fleeting nature, is beyond one’s grasp and desire to possess the object. Photographic montage also has the potential to embody what the object feels like for one. For example, one can tell the “the significance in memory” emphasized by Kracauer based on each photographs’ duration times. In this moment of La Jetee, the duration times for each photographs are clearly disproportionate that it shows how the woman appears within the man’s memory as time lapses. The woman appears through the mediating effect of photographic montage can never be grasped to its totality, just as memory is a intimate connection to an object instead of eternal possession and banishment of death.
Kracauer is against historicism that seeks “complete mirroring of the temporal sequence”to recreate all meaning of history. La Jetee’s use of disjunctive editing style juxtaposes different time and space to create abrupt viewing experience, breaking the linear progression of time and history. At 19’40’’ of the film, right after the moving image of the woman opening her eyes, the image suddenly cuts to the cold and horrifying face of the officer. The contrast is so intense that the viewers might even experience a few seconds of disorientation, just like the man closes his eyes in disbelief right after that shot. A second ago the man, as well as the viewers, was spending sweet time with the lover of dream decades before; a few seconds later the man, as well as the viewers, is sent back in this cold and damp underground cell, being tortured like a dog. The juxtaposition of images in contrast here is also a juxtaposition of different time and space. Similar editing strategies are used throughout the film to create a non-linear temporal space, just as memory functions on its significance to consciousness instead of spatial-temporal relations. In this sense, La Jetee stands with Kracauer and provides an alternative practice against historicism.
In the last section of photography, Kracauer overturns his argument on photography to its Hegelian synthesis by saying that “the warehousing of nature promotes of confrontation of consciousness with nature,”and photography provides “the reflection of reality that has slipped from it.” Paradoxically, yet convincingly, the apocalyptic scenario generates its own immanent redemption. La Jetee, is the one of the astonishing outcomes of that reflective tradition Kracauer foresaw. La Jetee recreates human memory poetically on top of the spatial-temporal logic of photography. By using disjunctive editing and mixing the moving images together with still images(photography), Chris Marker revives the man’s memory image and memory, offering an striking anti-historicism practice. The fact that La Jeteeis set in a post war apocalypse is worth noticing. Under this imaginative apocalypse, memory, together with the human body it is bound to, is exploited as a resource. However, the man’s, the film maker’s and the viewers’ bond and desires towards the fading memory, mediated by creative use of images, penetrate through the iron shell of surveillance and control. Perhaps in apocalyptic scenarios, the bond to memory is our only connection to history and the oppressed dream. La Jetee, with its excellent use of experimental techniques, elevates photography to a height to contain memory under its static surface, whether from the imaginative future or reminiscent past, living up to Kracauer’s prophecy.
用幻灯片拍科幻片!瓦解的末世建筑、全片唯一动态的女人之眼、绝美摄影的沙粒感,奇特而不违和。潜意识映像穿越的概念居然早在1962年就被玩过了,影像与内核一样牛逼,未来狱警威严一瞥,美好回忆无奈倒地。每秒24帧的理念变得黯淡无光,这是一部反电影的电影。→20.12.30 追加:《堤》就是电影届的杜尚小便池。它反掉了最后的表象权威。戈达尔最近拍的几部足以说明他在否定说“电影是每秒24格的真理”的自己。90岁的他在走近62年的克里斯·马克。15岁的我:“这是一部反电影的电影。”一切早已注定,导演并不是我最本源的梦。这部“电影”,就是我穿越的真相,就是我不必成为、随缘成为电影导演的理由。
他有三次提及博物馆。画外音将主人公的记忆称为博物馆;片中时间旅行试验地palais de chaillot一度被当作电影资料馆的空间;主角与他记忆中谜一般的女子相会的地方是一间自然博物馆。人的记忆、电影图像资料、自然世界的死亡标本,它们在“博物馆”中,一边成为防腐的存在,一边成为人为意识的产物。在博物馆中邂逅人类的过去时,我又多么希望记忆中的事物也能在福尔马林的药剂中不朽。它一边要承受局限,一边又无可比拟地浪漫。如果,如果可以死在以前的记忆中,又哪里需要去“躲过浩劫的未来”呢。
全片由一系列黑白静照组成,配以凝重的音乐、诗意的旁白、神秘的窃窃私语和噪音,传达出对记忆、时间、爱和死亡的思考。离散定格的影像契合了记忆与梦境的形式,作为实验电影也足够激进。28分钟的片子包含了动人的爱情、战争与科幻元素,冲击力极强。最爱标本馆一段,浪漫又充满末世感。(9.5/10)
1.我在没有时间的国度里遇见了你,我们漫步,唯一的感觉是墙上斑驳的记号。2.我不断的离开,不断的回来,你是否记得我?你是否愿意让我成为你的幽灵?我想跟你说,我带着你的回忆离开。3.我愿意抛弃美好未来,只为能再见你一面,我们的爱始于过去。4.静止的画面说着一个关于爱情的故事。
太刷新认识了,一部好的感人的电影,甚至不需要移动的画面来达到:真的很像人脑里的记忆,一帧一帧静止的照片。最重要的是竟然是爱情片!流泪了!
去除一切技术,甚至去除一切镜头,单单用图片蒙太奇来展开,这是纯粹的小说化的故事表达形式。而这部电影的意义可能在于展开了一种最吸引人类的思考,那就是征服时间的可能性。这种深刻的哲学讨论在此后被反复提起,但是永远不会有答案。
标本博物馆的设置太棒了,这些静止的影像又何尝不是时间的标本,故事的标本呢?
电影是每秒24格运动的幻觉。静帧画面更有诗意、文学性和间离感。并且切换的速度就是剪辑的节奏,完全没有生硬。
四星半. a Movie or Stills?《堤》的革命性在于以左岸派手法挑战24fps的定义与影像表达的界限,用极端方式印证了布列松的观点:任何画面只有在与其前后画面共同构成的段落中才具有意义. 至于形而上学的层面,它无外乎启发我们,存在总归是我的存在;记忆无所谓真假,它以某种超脱了时空的声画形式漂浮在弥留之际的脑海中.
看完之后惊叹于,好多年前我曾经问过小海一个问题, “人活着是为了什么?”高APM中的他仍然用手推了下眼镜说:“人活着是为了有一天能回到过去。”
那四秒钟的眼神,这不是照片集,就是电影,只不过是静止的艺术,更是真正的蒙太奇的艺术,音效和旁白的设计则代替了运动的图像和剪辑一起形成了影片独特的韵律和诗意,除了短以外非常完美。
和《野草莓》梦见自己死去不同,这次是看见自己死去。幻灯片切换,一帧一帧的静态图像,有着一种奇妙的“画面不动,意识在动”的感觉,爱情元素的加入有点让人唏嘘,也因为这个,导演给了女人一个连续动作,让我们看了一次gif。其实黑白静态画面,运用得当的话,是有着欲言又止的含蓄美的。
影像小说,电影文本,黑白PPT串联出来的故事,1962年的先锋实验。逻辑完备叙事干脆独白到位毫无赘余。三十年后的翻拍(对比之后不能认可只是作为创意来源的传承)在基础构架上完全没有脱出这里建立的范畴。
8.0/10。反乌托邦+诗性解说+鸳梦重温+黑白影像+伟大爱情+悲惨宿命论结局。‘’在绝大多数时候,电影的力量更来自每一个静态的画面。‘’——用侯麦的话来评价这部杰作真是再合适不过了。
【八部半电影节】想起唐德里罗《欧米伽点》:“电影无情的速率需要观众付出符合需要的绝对的警觉关注。”片子帧数减少,叙事密度则更大,仿若极简主义走向极端。形式的背后忽然察觉一个根本原理——记忆中的永恒是影摄不是像摄,是瞬时不是间段,就连描述,用的也是“画面”一词。
过去是虚无的国度,时间是静止的无,我愿被囚于闭合的因果链中、只为见你最后一面,胜过未来永生的安逸,胜过现存的一切。
穿越时空竟然是看自己死,有点像【12猴子】里的布鲁斯.威利斯。★★★★
感觉整部片子其实不是为了枪声响起的那一刻,而是一直等待着女人醒来开始眨眼的那个瞬间。震惊了 2018.8.10 重看。这其实是一部元电影。如果人可以进入任意时间,时间由此变成片段,变成“剪辑”,变成非线性的影像。与此同时也是唯心的,因为世界的存在依托于意识,时间旅行的本质是意识旅行,时间和空间存在于意识之中。2021.06.14 ASMR向。结束得如此突然。
没想到这个真人漫画让我如此喜欢。我也相信,人生嘛,无非就是费尽毕生精力去找寻童年的一个瞬间,一种感觉,一段印象。并且死无悔改。
四星半。强烈、纯粹、优美的画面冲击,抛却高科技视觉效果,最本质的故事和画面是如此动人。