Pseudo-intellectuals will rave about the deep, esoteric, hidden meanings of what they consider to be an art film classic. Nonsense! This movie is a ridiculous piece of piffle that goes nowhere, says nothing, is merely a kind of experiment in pointless mental meanderings, like an LSD trip gone wrong. Big hit down in The Village in New York, among "beatnik" types who lauded it to the skies. My goodness! How pitiful. Providing you can stand suffering extreme boredom, you may wish to watch the flick, to see for yourself what the effete fuss is all about; you may even have a chuckle or two at the utter banality of it. Good luck.

"Last Year at Marienbad" is the most enigmatic film that I have ever seen. I don't know if there is a "correct" interpretation of this film. The editing of the film make any sense of time irrelevant. Some scenes repeat, cut in without context, others replay with entirely different scenarios. The long, slow tracking shots, the muted dialogue with other people besides the main three, the way the people around them will suddenly stop moving to show the importance of the situation to the characters, and the soundtrack done mostly with organ and piano, truly create a unique and gloomy atmosphere.I am convinced the whole film takes place entirely in the characters' memories, but I can't really figure out which one, or if it's just all of them. It is unclear whether the lady, who is unnamed along with the rest of the characters, is alive or dead. The set design seems to loop in a never ending labyrinth, like the memories of the characters. I'm pretty sure that the story is told from the main three characters' perspectives, and they are each remembering what they've lost with each other, while the woman still can't decide if she made the right decision regarding whether to leave the man she is with for another, no matter what decision she did end up making (which I still can't quite decipher). This is simply my interpretation, but this interpretation (and all others) are truly irrelevant. I feel the main purpose of this film is not to simply tell a story, but evoke the emotions that these characters feel. It's a tough film to get into, but once you're into it it proves to be incredibly immersive. Eventually, we begin to feel what these characters do. We feel the loss, regret, and how close they were to love. But now this fading memory just feels like a dream, or a nightmare.

Although he'd been active in French cinema since 1947 Alain Resnais had the misfortune to make two landmark films during the short-lived so called New Wave hiccup which lasted something like four years from the late 1950s to the early 1960s but like Louis Malle, who began his own career at roughly the same time, and was tarred erroneously with the same brush, Resnais went on to become a highly distinguished mainstream filmmaker. One doesn't have to look far to see that Marienbad has little or no relationship to the dross being turned out by Godard and Truffaut; for one thing the genuine new waveleteers took misplaced pride in shooting on the street and making a movie for a stick of gum with friends and acquaintances handling most of the technical jobs, while from the very first frame it is evident that Marienbad employed top technicians to create and shoot the stunning effects, as well as spending lavishly on costume - every single person on screen, without exception, is in formal attire, tuxedos for the men, evening dress for the women, and groomed within an inch of their lives. This leaves us with the problematical screenplay by Alain Robbe Grillet but since I have no more idea than the regular film buff of what 1) it is about or 2) what it means I'm quite happy to let the Academic-Pseud axis compare orgasms, say that it's stunning to look at and leave it at that.

There have been many, many discussions about the meaning that Resnais wanted to convey with Last Year in Marienbad. Having just listened to the interview that Resnais gives (in French) about the movie (and which is available on the Criterion edition), and having the additional luck to speak French as my first language, I can confidently say that Resnais seemed extremely ambiguous about any meaning that the film might or might not have. By meaning, I am referring to any single interpretation or rational explanation of the movie. The author of an artistic piece, whether it is painting, music, sculpture or any medium of expression, does not have any obligation to provide a formal explanation of his/her work.Very simply said, I believe that Resnais, here, managed to make a film in the same way as any other artist using any other form of artistic expression. And he succeeded beautifully. We are hypnotized by the sheer, amazing beauty of the images and the actors, the pathos-inducing organ playing and the playful tricks that Resnais spread throughout the dialogues/monologues, the sets, the reflections in the mirrors, and the whole bagful of cinematographic visual gimmicks, charades and deceptions and then some more. This alone exerts a fascination on the viewer, and simply by shutting down the analytical part of one's brain - something akin to the full sensory availability or receptiveness one can achieve practising yoga or TM -, one finds out that a LOT is happening in Last Year in Marienbad.When watching the film in such a state of receptiveness, the artistic value of Last Year in Marienbad begins to take over, and the urge to find a single logical thread, or any thread at all, tends to dwindle and allow one to really enjoy the pure experience of watching that movie. LYAM is not a popcorn/Tweeting-while-watching kind of film, by far and large: one must be entirely available, both mentally and physically to appreciate it totally. Difficult movie? Sure. Aggravating? Yes. It's not a flawless masterpiece. Like the jury at the 1961 Cannes Festival, I find Giorgio Albertazzi's (X) accent absolutely grating on my nerves, and the artistic choice of using the combination of a refrigerating, detached acting style with an artificial, pretentious-sounding, emotionless and mechanical tone of speaking (verging on the ridiculous), a resounding mistake. Despite these flaws, and choosing to accept them nonetheless, LYAM remains in its form an exquisitely beautiful movie and a pure ravishment for the senses. It is also probably the purest form of expression the seventh art ever reached. It's likely the closest a film has ever been from expressing the feeling of abstraction that lies at the blurred frontier between wakefulness and sleep. An oneiric film that compares with all other abstract forms of art.I listened very closely to Resnais in the interview I was mentioning at the beginning. I really don't think he had a clean-cut, first-degree story to tell with this movie. He clearly leaves you the impression that he was first and foremost seduced by the aesthetic values of the script Robbe-Grillet had sent him. That was his leitmotiv and that was the leitmotiv he also tried to convey with the movie.I was intrigued by the suggestion made not only by Ginette Vincendeau, the cinema scholar who is interviewed on the Criterion Supplement DVD, but also by Resnais himself in an interview apparently made around the time that LYAM was released (according to Mrs. Vincendeau's recollection - I didn't look for that interview yet), that the movie's actual subject is rape. Of course, rape is one among the few first-degree meanings that anyone with a brain can deduce easily in several scenes of the movie. Until I learned about this, I could not really decide that the idea of a rape was formally presented in LYAM. As for all concrete suggestions that come to mind when absorbing the film, there always remains a feeling of ambiguity that prevents the idea that this deals with rape from gelling. But if it is true that LYAM actually deals with rape in a topical manner, I will soon revisit the movie keeping this in mind. As a note of caution, however: in Resnais' interview on the Criterion DVD, Resnais later seemed to deny that we should view the culprit scenes as depicting a rape.Decidedly, LYAM is the cinematographic representation of Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty. That is, when you see something in the movie, you automatically end up missing something else that then escapes your detection, with the result that you can never obtain a full knowledge of the movie's content. Or, let's say that the film's beauty is as evanescent as the most delicate and colourful jellyfish's: you can only contemplate it from behind a glass panel in an aquarium. As soon as you remove it from its element to better watch it, it then becomes a lump of amorphous jelly that evokes disgust instead of the exhilaration felt when a barrier existed between the animal and you.