Sans soleil (1983) - film review

Through a series of letters and visual images, a travelling filmmaker Sandor Krasna explores the cultures of the places he has visited (mainly Japan and Africa) and relates what he sees to his own personal philosophy.

One of the most striking documentaries ever filmed, Sans Soleil is both illuminating and captivating, offering a profoundly spiritual interpretation of the world, or, specifically, mankind’s place in it.  The film flitters from place to place, forming extraordinary connections between events, cultures and locations, almost as if this were a dream induced by hallucinogenic drugs.

From the similarities in Chris Marker’s other films, it is almost certain that he is the fictitious film-maker Sandor Krasna in this film.  His philosophical and cinematic ramblings take in such disparate things as Japanese doll burning ceremonies, contemporary political events in Guinea-Bissau and some radical theories about Alfred Hitchock’s film Vertigo, to name just a few.  What should be a fragmented montage of uncoupled images and thoughts strangely acquires a coherent whole which is both insightful and astonishingly beautiful, although a sombre melancholic undertone is noticeable throughout.

The fate of humanity is eluded to with a chilling sense of realism in some places.  The poverty of the malnourished African nations and the soulless, break-neck pace of a consumer-obsessed Japan are merely stepping stones towards man’s ultimate state, a barren civilisation where everything is remembered and nothing is forgotten.  With the growth in instantaneous communication which has occurred since the film was made, Marker’s apocalypse appears closer than he could ever have conceived.

© James Travers 2000

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