Last Year at Marienbad: Nausea in the Courtyard

This really ought to be about David Lynch. But I can’t bring myself to give the man short shrift, to jot down a few thoughts to be done with it. More often than not I freely draft these mini reviews as a way to keep my typing fingers limber, creatively speaking anyway. Some weeks I can give them the time they deserve; others, I can do little more than channel a mouthful of air and hope for the best. Lynch needs time. Soon.

But would you believe my luck? This week, actually the night before Lynch passed away, I watched Alan Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (1961). I forgot that films could make me nauseous, that the camera not only determines what and how I see but can determine my own feelings about the what and the how. The movie is, dare I say, “Lynchian.”

That word is overused. In fact, we ought to be honest that it rarely means much more than “odd,” or, if you’re a bit of a pedant, “something singular in style and substance, a celebration of the individual soul’s relationship to the universe à la the art of David Lynch and his love of TM.” For my part, Last Year at Marienbad fits the bill because it confounded and nauseated me, plunged me back into the pit of my own stomach, the way I felt when I first saw the Red Room, the disfigured beauty of the Elephant Man, and Dennis Hopper breathe deeply from the ether. Resnais’ movie is sickness in motion.

It concerns a hotel, a gorgeously austere Baroque structure where rich Europeans spend their summers. The grounds are the sort of place a Jane Austen protagonist might first encounter her love interest, where they might catch each other’s eyes during a dance, where he might put her down with a stray, inviting remark. Here, there is no playfulness or love. The camera scans bare hallways. Unmoving people seemingly frozen in time form a backdrop for a man and a woman. He insists they met last year; she says he’s insane.

A stark organ blares. The camera keeps on moving, keeps on scanning. Quick cuts and fades give the already eerie cinematography an almost psychedelic quality. Who is right? Is either of them right? Why does the tall man keep playing his game with matchsticks?

Whether we get the answer is (ho-ho) up to interpretation, I suppose. But I can think of few films to better presage my learning about the death of David Lynch. Without him, the world feels that much more confused. I feel that much more nauseated, lost.