Sunless (Sans Soleil) (1983)

 

Sans Soleil

Now, having just spent 100 minutes watching “Sans Soleil” (“Sunless”), I am entirely unable to explain what I have just been watching. It is not that I did not like the movie, I just have no clue what this was about.

We are watching a lot of footage from a number of different places, among these, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, Cape Verde, San Francisco and especially Japan. The footage has likely been filmed by filmmaker Chris Marker, though some stock footage seems to be mixed in. The imagery feels random, though there is some connection with the narration. It is just that the narration also feels random.

The English version, I watched, is narrated by Alexandra Stewart who tell a story as if told to her by another person, likely the cameraman behind the images (eg. Chris Marker). This story, supposed to be his impressions and ideas, is a musing on... I do not have a clue. Following the narration is like dropping in on a conversation where you missed the beginning and therefore lack the context, where sensible words therefore become meaningless sentences. There was something about death, about spirit worship, dancing, looking into the camera, playing videogames, living next to a volcano and the Hitchcock movie “Vertigo”. Yet, it may be nothing more than a travelogue of scenes and people and experiences made by the photographer.

It took me about half an hour to come to terms with that I likely would not work out what this is all about and instead just focus on the imagery. This is good, because there is a lot to look at.

The large majority of the scenes are from Japan, a place I am fascinated with. I have a visit to Japan scheduled for July and anything Japanese is interesting. These pictures, at least forty years old (though some maybe as old as the seventies), are of a different Japan than I know, and yet it is also very familiar to the country today. The temples, the ceremonies, the videogames, the trains or just people. Had these pictures been of any other place, they would have been half as interesting. In these pictures, people on the train look empty into the air, today they look empty into their phone. The dedication to the activities is the same, the focus and intensity. Japan is a country like no other.

Did I mention that I watched the Japanese movie “Perfect Days” last week? This would be an interesting double feature.

How the other images fit in I do not know. There were striking pictures of volcanoes in Iceland and dogs in the surf on Cape Verde, but the connection remained obscure.

If I should make a comparison then “Sans Soleil” reminded me of “India Song”, with its obscure narration and striking imagery, with the notable difference that the pictures in “Sans Soleil” are much more pleasant and less pretentious.

Whether the production as such is pretentious, well, that I will leave up to the viewer.