Chris Marker - La Jetée (1962)
Thursday, July 19, 2007
First; if you've written me about an invite for karagarga after this post, you should have received one, if not; write me again.
The survivors of a destroyed Paris in the aftermath of World War III, live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. They research time travel, hoping to send someone back to before the devastating war to recover food, medicine, or energy for the present, "to summon the past and future to the aid of the present". The traveler is a male prisoner, his vague but obsessive childhood memory of witnessing a woman (Hélène Chatelain) during a violent incident on the main terminal ("The Jetty") at Orly Airport is used as the key to his journey back in time. He is thrown back to the past again and again. He repeatedly meets and speaks to the woman who was present at the terminal. After his successful passages to the past, the experimenters attempt to send him into the deep future. In a brief meeting with the technologically advanced people of the future, he is given a power unit sufficient to regenerate his own destroyed society. On his return, he is cast aside by his imprisoners to die. Before he can be executed, he is contacted by the people of the future, who offer to help him escape to their time, but he asks to be returned to his childhood. He is returned and finds the violent incident he partially witnessed as a child was his own death as an adult.
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at 5:12 PM