Level Five (1997)

I get anxious when sitting down to watch a Chris Marker documentary for the first time because my life has been forever altered on more than one occasion by doing so. L5 shook me, but only time will tell if it went deeper than that.
The topic is Marker’s favourite obsession: memory. In a broader sense, it’s the memory/collective amnesia of an entire country, Japan, in response to the Battle of Okinawa that took place in 1945.
Documentary narrations are typically scripted, but L5’s is more than just narration; it’s a decisive reliving of an event from a point in time aware of its own latitude in relation to what it comments on. The temporal distance isn't a direct removal; it’s a connection of causality that we as viewers share with Marker and his proxy, the female computer programmer.

4 playthings of a mad god out of 5

Sans Soleil (1983)

Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil is a deeply profound study of the mechanics of memory and their endemic relationship with time and place. It exists as a documentary style essay, using real life imagery alongside real life observations that take the form of letters penned by a fictional cameraman, which are then narrated by a reflective female voice.
Its complexity never once threatens to overwhelm its narrative, which is both separate from the 16mm film and utterly dependent on it.
It also contains within it the most perfect deconstruction of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) that I've ever seen or heard.

5 things that quicken the heart out of 5

A.K. (1985)

Chris Marker’s documentary of the making of Akira Kurosawa's Ran (1985).
Marker points his camera and lets events unfold; he waits, listens and very occasionally waxes lyrical on memory and method.
We see Kurosawa as he sees him, as an old man struggling against the elements on the side of a mountain, but equally at home in an environment that gives him life, namely on set, being Sensei.
It’s a meditative experience and a brief glimpse into the workings of a master film-maker. Essential viewing for fans of either director.

5 times filming the untranslatable out of 5

Pictures at an Exhibition (2008)

I’m unsure what Marker is trying to convey with this work. He embraced digital media long ago, but what he presents here is the kind of thing anyone with Photoshop could do, and while each picture has a deeper meaning, some obvious (Pagan Goddess trying to protect Christianity from itself) and some less so (Kong and Psyche), what I don’t understand is why?
Is it commentary on the loss of originality or a lazy montage? The clash of classicism with modernism; the homage to popular culture, children’s literature, cult sci-fi, renaissance sculpture, etc, leave me confused.
Why are we going round in circles?
I've been in this room but now it’s different.
The titles of the paintings suggest he is deconstructing and recreating, like history repeating. Who knows for sure, except Marker?

2½ Arvo Part's Spiegel Im Spiegel keeps me here out of 5

Le Mystère Koumiko (1967)

Chris Marker’s films are like hidden treasure, they can be so infuriatingly hard to find but make the effort and the rewards are great.
At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics he chances upon a woman in the crowd, Koumiko, so he follows her and through a candid interview contrasts the minutiae of her life with the life of all Japan.
The second half of the film gets to the very heart of Koumiko. It's Marker’s film, but it's her film also, a product of chance, both seemingly subjective and objective at the same time. That ability to make impossibilities real is one of the things that separates the French film-maker from his peers.

4 journeys through time, place and personality out of 5

La Jetée (1962)

An image in a man's mind of his past may be the key to rescuing the present and opening the future.
It's a good place to start if you're new to Chris Marker's film-making. It introduces the viewer to his views on film, politics, people, memory, the past, present and future and the connection between them; subjects he returned to many times. It's short, engaging, thought-provoking and it stays in your memory long after viewing.
To me, Marker is one of the great film-makers.
Hitchcock fans will spot a reference to one of his favourite films.

5 archive pictures of the future out of 5