Last Year at Marienbad

“Last Year at Marienbad” (or was it Fredericksbad?) explores the phenomenon of memory and the idea of possibility in the context of the spa-going European rich between the wars. More precisely, its concern with memory- which on the surface is about identifying and proving what happened when, where and to whom- describes an obsession with naming literal events that had no outcome last year anymore than they can in the present.

Alain Resnais’ film moves through repetitive ritual to a depiction of the stagnation which results when forms and patterns of behavior become surrogates for action. The environment of Marienbad is an active element of the film barricading and confounding any possibility that even chance could enter the equation to counter inertia.

The film begins with long, elaborate and repetitive scenes of the setting of the luxurious spa. Its gilt encrusted ceilings and walls; the endless enfilade of dimly glittering hallways and heavily paneled doors that lead to more hallways and other doors, an ineluctable Piranesian loop.

The colorless trompe l’oeil murals of the walls and the occasional framed period etching depict formal gardens almost identical to the flat geometric park surrounding the villa. These images are less works of imagination than random game board instructions. They are relentless reminders for the characters parading from room to room, that this world operates in single-point perspective, where depth is merely alluded to by way of elaborate adjustments and calculations. It isn’t actually achievable, let alone desirable, by the rules of their game.

On stage an actress and actor- dressed, coiffed and bejeweled exactly as the audience members at the spa’s little theater- deliver their lines as if automatons. All of the characters, only three of whom emerge as actual identities, share a lifelessness which is inescapable.

The narrative voice belongs to one of them, the suitor. His pervasive role is to establish, particularly with the woman he pursues, what happened when they met the year before and fell in love. His fractured argument moves to define what has to have happened at that time for him to know all that he does about her. Almost convincing in its specifics, the case he makes nonetheless lacks any embodied reality.

That this is so continually leads the viewer back to the film’s central paradox: the very urgency of unveiling the truth about last year is trumped by the certainty of inertia. The suitor cannot differentiate between persistence and will, which he entirely lacks and fears. The unrelenting quality of his quest is entirely betrayed by his willingness to postpone action.

The object of his love, the exquisite, young Delphine Seyrig, is a parody of restless passive beauty. Neither can she give herself to anyone or anything, nor can she maintain a position or point of view (- she never stays anywhere more than a few weeks and, repeatedly, we see her break the heel of her shoe.) She represents fear in its overt form. Her modus operandi is escape; whether sitting, standing, lying or walking her internal focus is on knowing where the exit from the moment lies. For her, fear is not a negative emotion, but a comfortable milieu and an actual safeguard enabling an exploration which cannot eventuate in any conclusion. Even if unwillingly, she can endure small doses of her pursuer’s portrayal of what transpired when last they met. Her decisive place of confidence rests in her ability to counter any certainty about what happened with the parry that decision can await a future time. Such time, of course, could never actually present itself, since only the fear has life.

The third figure, her husband, is an agent of death who inspires fear. Little more capable of action than the others (who represent feelings of fear and sentiment), he represents will, though meaningless and without effect.

The symbol of his might is a game/trick that he displays early in the film to establish his dominance among the residents at Marienbad. Sixteen objects- matches, cards- are placed in four rows: 7. 5. 3. 1. The rule: each of the two players may, in a given turn, take away one or more pieces, but only from one row. Whoever must take the last piece loses. The husband calmly asserts that though he could lose, he never does.

Everyone wants to figure out a strategy or gimmick to explain the winner’s luck: who goes first; take away even numbers only; etc. But the game can only be won by paying attention as you go. The husband neither needs to confuse nor cheat; he only has to concentrate- an impossibility for the other characters who are either unconscious or dead in their faithful observance of meaningless forms. The husband lives only through the will to win, however pointless. Obviously the winnings mean nothing to him, only the power.

That power also describes his hold on his wife. Given that his very presence inspires fear, he is her perfect mate. She gets to hold onto the freedom of being afraid without respite, while he gets to experience total control with the absence of desire. Each of these characters remains impervious to any external stimulus; each also achieves constancy of occupation because their own feeling states never bore them. They are ghosts in an airless world. Like the images on the walls, the characters live a 2-dimensional existence, lacking depth in every sense of the word. Their world is like a blueprint or a map, where a journey can be conceived, plotted and traced, even confirmed, but never taken.

When finally the wife does go off with the suitor, they are each fulfilling a role like young children in a school play, or markers on a game board. The suitor does not want, nor can he, change his role to become a man, the lover. He is terrified of will and force- potency, and of the loneliness of even momentary non-consensuality. The wife cannot live in an environment free from fear and the need to escape. Having nothing but surface and form, she has nothing to give to a man who would want her as a woman. Equally powerless where real action is concerned, the husband cannot stop them, but knows they can go nowhere.

As the fatelessly mismatched couple flees into the night, the narrator puzzles over how it is possible, in this plain, flat garden- devoid of all vegetation or any obfuscating element, where everything is straight paths and right angles- that, even now, they are losing their way.