The human impulse when confronted with something that appears to be a puzzle is to attempt to solve it. This tendency presupposes that all puzzles have a single correct solution, and that all things that appear to be puzzles are, in fact, puzzles. Such is the frustration underlying Alain Resnais' controversial 1961 film, L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad), the very point of which appears to be to confound and undermine these ingrained expectations.
The film's premise is thus: a man (Giorgio Albertazzi, billed as 'X') meets a woman (Delphine Seyrig, billed as 'A') while staying at an opulent chateau in Marienbad, a spa town in the former Czechoslovakia. 'X' believes that he has met 'A' the previous year, and that she had then promised to leave her husband for him; she demurs, claiming not to remember him. A second man, 'M' (Sacha Pitoeff ), who may or may not be 'A's husband, looms over the proceedings with oblique menace. From there the film appears to be a study of the nature of objectivity and memory, with scenes repeating over and over with slight variations: a fireplace will be on the other side of a room, with a landscape hanging over the mantle rather than a mirror; a feathered dressing gown transforms into a black evening gown; a diagram of the hotel grounds is subtly altered. Certain motifs, however, are prominent: a parlor game is played over and over again; an ambiguous statue's meaning is bruited about; and the hotel's endless corridors and doorways are invoked in a seemingly looped voice-over, perhaps as a metaphor for the film's nightmarishly infinite feel.
What actually happens in Marienbad is both unknowable and immaterial; it is the first, and perhaps best example of a film defying our desire for narrative, definite storytelling and instead aiming directly for a visceral emotional response. To attempt to "solve" the movie is ultimately beside the point. Resnais and his screenwriter, the avant-garde novelist and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet (an excellent New York Times profile is here), have created a kind of surrealist horror film, mining the same deep vein of existential dread as latter-day abstractionist David Lynch, upon whose work Marienbad is an undeniably profound influence. The events of the film as we see them are disquieting enough - there is a possible murder - but the presentation is so feverish, so obtuse, that it evokes a concurrent blend of bewilderment, claustrophobia, and déjà vu.
Last Year at Marienbad is currently playing a limited return engagement at Film Forum (209 W. Houston Street). The trailer may be viewed here.
