MovieChat Forums > La jetée (1962) Discussion > why do they send him anywhere?

why do they send him anywhere?

posted 9 years ago by vandwedge
3 replies | jump to latest

I may have missed a couple of lines of narration in the film that explain this, so please be patient with my ignorance on the matter --

Why do they send the guy backward? All he does while he's there is flirt with the woman. Was he supposed to be doing something else that would have prevented Paris' destruction in some way?

Why do they send him forward? While he's there he talks about giving the future-people some sort of information that will help them, but what could that be? And who would it help, and how?

Oh yes it's Laaarry Holmes/and the feeelin's right/Oh yes it's Laaarry Holmes/what a fight

[–] disinterested_spectator 9 years ago

The narrator sort of suggests that he is being sent back in time to get stuff like food and bring it back with him. But all he does is wake up empty-handed. So when the time traveler wonders if he really went back in time or was just having a dream, I thought to myself, “Unless you bring some food back, it might just as well be a dream.”

There is no good reason given for sending him into the future. This is one of those movies that seem profound to people because it doesn’t make any sense.

[–] spank-my-17 8 years ago

They tested on many prisoners, but he was the first to actually succeed to go into the past. Then months past, while he trained by constantly going back and getting better at it.

All this seemed to be preparation to try and get him forward in time, to find help for humanity. He does, and they give him something that can restart civilization in his present. After that the scientists are done with him and are about to kill him.

He then succeeds to escape and once more go back into the past, to the woman that he fell in love with, but this time one of them followed him there and ends up killing him. (Or maybe just shoots his dormant body in the present)

Anyway, that's mostly how I understood it. :)

[–] KingCobra686 8 years ago

I got the impression that he was able to travel successfully back in time by focusing on the memory that resonated strongly with him. He felt connected enough to it that he was able to jump the bridge over time.

Once he was able to do that, he eventually turned that into traveling to times that he didnt have a strong connection to.