La Jetee, a film made in large part with no film at all,
relies on pictures to portray a narrative of past, present, future, and the
potency of a memory. Set in the bleak aftermath of WWIII, the remaining
survivors are subject to scientific trials of attempted time travel. The film’s
subject, we learn, is a man with a vague, fleeting childhood memory of a day at
an airport, a woman on a jetty, and a man’s final moments. La Jetee presents an
interesting relation between past/present/future, memories, and photographs. The
film is primarily composed of snapshots, which like memories have the power to
take us back, offering a partial view of a time other than the present. In this
way photographs and memories are a form of time travel in their own right,
though neither can allow us to truly relive the past. Film therefore can act in
the same way, as a means of temporal escape.
I really like what you said about photographs being memories and able to take us back in time. It is a way of time travel which is why it fits in perfectly with this film. He got to escape with the woman for a while in the past. But I guess you can't live in the past forever. I think the German from his present life coming back to kill him in the past kind of shows that.
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