MovieChat Forums > Sans soleil (1983) Discussion > Overwhelming film experience...

Overwhelming film experience...


I have seen Sans Soleil numerous times over the past decade and each time I catch a new detail and am overwhelmed by its power. Chris Marker has carved out a niche as a filmmaker than I belive to be unparalleled. Does anyone care to comment on the film?

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yeah, where can you find a movie like this? it's not on dvd is it?

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It has been published on DVD in France and Belgium by Argos Film and Arte in a package contening "Sans Soleil" and "La Jetée" another masterpiece by Marker. Good luck!

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The DVD has been released, with Marker's "La Jetee", by Criterion, on June 26th 2007.
But most of you fans are probably aware of this.

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I totally agree. Sans Soleil is a wonderful film and I found it to be far more engrossing than many "conventional" fiction films I've seen. Chris Marker is definitely a pioneering film-maker who has managed to underline that film can exist outside the boundaries of conventional narrative without losing its accessibility (as opposed to, say, Peter Greenaway's work, which seems to wallow in its own self-importance).

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It's one of the best film I've seen in my life.Chris Marker speaks with poetry about Japan which is a country I relly like.By the way in Wim Wender's Tokyo-Ga Wim met Chris In aTokyo's bar when he was shooting Sunless.I'm lucky I have the VHS of this movie.

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[deleted]

The picture itself was good but the commentary was terrible for too much of it.

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[deleted]

Really, this movie has been my favourite since I first saw it in `89 and i've nere heard that before. I thought there was only a few pictures of marker ever taken. Does he (wenders) interview him? Let me know please. Now i have to try and find that film. thanks for this.

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After I watched this film I felt like I had participated in something big. I was and still am haunted by the images I saw. It was haunting to me in the same way that La Jetee was or even Vertigo. I wish he was more beloved of a filmmaker. He experimanted with concepts in film that I consider to be unique to this day.

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

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I just got through studying Sans Soleil on my degree course in film studies. My lecturer said it was throwing us into the deep end of art film after we've spent our lives paddling in the shallowness of Hollywood. Most of my fellow students drowned. In fact, in the seminar that followed most of them went down howling. But this didn't fase my lecturer, who was happy that Sans Soleil wasn't for everyone, but wished that each student would find something in their lives that revealed a higher meaning, whether it be a football match, book or painting. Now, several weeks later, I find Sans Soleil haunting my dreams and my waking stream of consciousness keeps taking me back to it. Black cats with white paws, dozing commuters, arcade games and the faces of women in African market places that are used as background for news items sometimes catching the camera, for just one frame out of 24. My life is richer for seeing Sans Soleil.

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I love this film, I love how it changes everytime you watch it. I am writing my honours thesis about memory and memorialising and recently re-watched this film as part of my research (on a big screen, on a small screen it is beautiful, on a big screen it is overwhelmingly, suffocatingly, stunningly, shockingly, confrontingly powerful). The first time this is a film about remembering, the second time it is about forgetting and remembering what you've forgotten. I cxouldn't believe the things I'd forgotten from my first viewing, the starved shrivelled cows stuck in mud, the African woman with the open wound and her family picking off the maggots, the Kennedy Robot, I wonder if there are more things about it I don't remember. Chris Marker has created a memorial to remembering, of images that are not just images, they are memories, his memories and now my memories, our memories. I know people who didn't like this film, didn't understand it, whereas I feel it in my heart, in my bones. It is a film you don't really watch so much as experience. Watching it is like remembering a dream.

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"My life is richer for seeing Sans Soleil."

That sums it up perfectly, rs-35.

You can't spell "Godard" without "God"

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Beautifully put, RS 35.

I'm glad that Sans Soleil touched you in a meaningful way.

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[deleted]

i wasnt blown away by it, to me it seemed like Baraka (which i love) without the music or the amazing cinematography and instead a lot of somewhat overwhelming narration. there was some interesting philosophising though, and i loved the train passengers sequence and the shots of the cat statues- maybe i just wasnt in the right mood, as i can even be bored by baraka if im not in the 'baraka mood'.
i do feel that i am better off for having watched it though and as a film lover thats all i really ask.

memento mori

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This intellectually overwhelming essay really has a thematic core and a certain point of interest, although it seems loose in structure, its itenarary is certain.

Anyway, anybody reading it from a historical point of view?

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I actually burst out crying the first time I saw it, I was so moved by how beautiful yet humble it was.

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That in itself is both beautiful and a testament to how powerful this film is.

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