26. Style as a State: Alain Resnais’ Je t’aime, je t’aime (1968)

Time and time again I knew what I was doing and

Time and time again it just made things worse

It seems you see the most of what is really true when

You’re stepping into your hearse

Only time can write a song that’s really really real

The best a man can say is how its play on him does feel

And know he only knows as much as time to him reveals
—’Time’, Richard Hell (Destiny Street, 1982)

Time, it’s said of in the opening sequences of Alain Resnais’ 1968 sci-fi Je t’aime, je t’aime, is something that scientists can explore the past of but not the future of, and even then, only at intervals of a minute at a time. It seems a safe enough enterprise, a white lab mouse is shown to have safely made the excursion in one piece, but then, as the scientists readily point out, a mouse is unable to verbally recount the voyage, so a human is necessary to make the experimental trip. But, time is also a creator of feelings and memories, often darkly sad or painfully repressed, not merely a void with which to experiment and observe, so our hero’s journey might not be the seamless excursion we’re being sold.

Read Full Post »