Directed by Chris Marker.
In a Nutshell: A montage of videos from cultures across the world.
Sans Soleil is one of the most poetic and rich films I have seen in a very long time. But in writing this review, how on earth do I describe it? The simplest explanation I have is this. Sans Soleil is a collection of videos taken worldwide, organized like a travel log. Much of the focus placed on the impoverished Guinea-Bissau and the technologically advancing Tokyo. Also included is Paris, a shot of Iceland from the 60’s that bookends the film, and a detour to San Francisco that indulges in seeing the locations Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo was filmed. The movie is narrated by an unseen woman, revealed at the end to be a man named Sandor Krasnar, who is actually Chris Marker’s alter ego. That is the film, but at the same time nowhere near what the film “is”.
Sans Soleil is one of the most poetic and rich films I have seen in a very long time. But in writing this review, how on earth do I describe it? The simplest explanation I have is this. Sans Soleil is a collection of videos taken worldwide, organized like a travel log. Much of the focus placed on the impoverished Guinea-Bissau and the technologically advancing Tokyo. Also included is Paris, a shot of Iceland from the 60’s that bookends the film, and a detour to San Francisco that indulges in seeing the locations Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo was filmed. The movie is narrated by an unseen woman, revealed at the end to be a man named Sandor Krasnar, who is actually Chris Marker’s alter ego. That is the film, but at the same time nowhere near what the film “is”.
It has little structure and little concreteness to hang a summation on. One of the clearer ideas that surfaces is its analysis of Vertigo. Narrative-wise, it drops in apropos of nothing but is not entirely random. Vertigo is a film about the dangers of memory and the past’s destructive influence on the present. Sans Soleil is wed to the similar idea that the true resonance of the past cannot be captured and even the simple photograph or recorded video cannot hold truth. At the odd moment, the film will enter into “The Zone” where a Japanese computer scientist (again, a Marker alter ego) turns the film into dichromatic, flat images. It captures the image, but renders it unrecognizable. One image that survives this deconstruction is the idyllic shot of the girls in Iceland. Even though neither Marker nor the audience knows the true nature behind the girls, but the film keeps it as an untouched emblem of purity.
There is no way I can make a concrete statement to summarize this film. I imagine some who are reading this still have no idea what this is about. I believe San Soleil does not wish to trick the viewer into the somewhat altered views of Marker’s travelogue but revel in how the power of the subjective human memory. It is a film with no set context or aim, but let’s the assemblage of video and narration shape its own interpretation for each viewer. This is a film you just need to experience for yourself.
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