La Jetée
La Jetée (1962)
Dir. Chris Marker
The greatest short film ever created.
This is where I stand with this film, always and forever, but it arose with confidence once again in my mind after my much-delayed and deflating viewing of Nolan’s Inception. After Nolan quite simply broke his own rule of the logic of the film (to paraphrase a line of dialogue: “Dreams are about the feeling, not just the visual”) by delivering just that; a film devoid of feeling and purely about the visual, it couldn’t leave my mind throughout the remainder of the film… Nolan took nearly 3 hours to deliver a fraction of what Chris Marker did in 28 minutes. Marker’s film is as visually stunning as they come, but it’s the emotional backbone that keeps the film eternally prescient. And while I have a reason in Inception to share this film with you today, whether you’ve never seen it, or you’ve seen it 50 times, it’s always, always an ideal time to view the masterwork of short-form cinema, La Jetée. Enjoy.
