Depends on your preferences in film. The French New Wave was one of the best things to happen to cinema, in my opinion. And this film is a haunting, hypnotic, dreamlike masterpiece that rewards many viewings—for me, at least. As always, YMMV.
shareNope. I'm with that owl guy... This movie is weird and beautiful.
I first discovered it a long time ago reading a book titled Focus on the Science Fiction Film (ed. William Johnson), in a short essay by Brian Aldiss. There is also a transcription of a taped interview with Alain Resnais in the same book. My younger self was unlikely to appreciate the movie without this suggestion that it had some connection with SF and now I can't quite think of it without considering warped time, virtual reality constructs and a whole bunch of Twilight Zone echos.
It does have that quality, doesn't it? Science-fiction's literary New Wave of the late 1960s/early 1970s was devoted to exploring this sort of "inner space" & is well worth reading now. A pity so much of it has been forgotten.
Like so many Twilight Zone episodes, the film deals with identity, existential emptiness, authenticity (or lack thereof), subjective views of reality, etc. Great stuff!
Interesting.
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