Sans soleil (1983)
Directed by Chris Marker

Film Review

Possibly the most enchanting and intriguing of Chris Marker's many masterfully crafted essais cinématographiques, Sans soleil is an enticing meditation on the world and our place within it.  Far from being a conventional documentary with a clearly expounded thesis, it melds together various political, religious, historical and philosophical themes and provides an intensely involving - almost spiritual - experience for the spectator.  As we take in what we see and hear, making the connections that we are invited to make of our own volition, we are compelled to reflect on what it means to be a human being in a world of such diverse and extreme cultures.

Like a butterfly intoxicated with all the wonder it encounters in a world of seemingly boundess diversity, the film flitters from place to place, throwing wildly contrasting images into our consciousness which, like pieces of a jigsaw, we feel impelled to slot together in an attempt to make sense of it all.  From strange doll burning ceremonies in Japan to contemporary political events in famine-torn Guinea-Bissau, Sans soleil provides a magical mystery tour that seems to want to encompass the entirety of human thought and experience, even venturing to include a bizarre detour offering a controversial analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo.

Chris Marker first developed his distinctive technique in collaboration with fellow avant-garde filmmaker Alain Resnais on such notable short films as Nuit et brouillard (1955) and Les Statues meurent aussi (1953).  In common with these early films, Sans soleil reminds us of the primal importance of memory in our lives, the divine mechanism by which we attempt to make sense of a world that threatens continually to overwhelm us with its myriad of disconnected sense impressions.

Here, the vision that Marker ultimately presents us with is one that is every bit as haunting as that which he previously left us with in La Jetée (1962) - one that evokes the same incredibly deep sense of loss and injustice.  With one half of the world succumbing to poverty of the most extreme kind, and the other half sinking into a heaving morass of consumerist trash, humanity appears to be on two roads to Hell that could not be more different - one natural, the other self-inflicted, both the result of our lamentable inability to understand our true nature and thereby coordinate our efforts to build a better world.

In the starving deserts of Africa time grinds to an excruciating crawl; in post-industrialised Japan, time races by so fast that it no longer seems to exist.  In the four decades that have passed since Chris Marker made this remarkable film, the trends has continued apace to an alarming degree, the schism between the developed world and its forgotten poor relation widening to infinity thanks to galloping technological progress and the unbounded greed of the rich and powerful. Watching Sans soleil today you cannot help but feel that it will serve as the most fitting obituary for our species - every bit as ironic, and just as evocative, as Shelley's broken statue of Ozymandias lost in the desert wastes of a forgotten civilisation.

Film Synopsis

Itinerant filmmaker Sandor Krasna offers his personal reflection on the threads that connect the multifarious aspects of humanity through a film that combines readings of letters with stark visual images.  In his travels from Japan to Guinea Bissau, Krasna assimilates the cultures and mores of disparate human societies, contrasting how individuals deal with the horrors - natural and manmade - that threaten both their well-being and existence.  As he does so, he offers a profound insight into the complexity and durability of the human condition, revealing our shared nature in a world of ever increasing diversity.  We are left contemplating one question: just where is all this taking us?