Art of the Absurd and the Sublime

“…I have another game to suggest instead. I know a game I always win. --If you can't lose it's not a game. --I can lose. But I always win”(Resnais). Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad is beautifully written, distant yet intimate, parallels aching to meet and above all, it has remarkable cinematography. It is sublime, absurdist and abstract ,making this film's deviationsa philosophical puzzle. It has no real ending but can go on in a constant loop, lost in that time frame with no real spatial relation to time. Same goes for the beautifully disoriented plot in Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura where the subject of the film becomes lost within the story and also to the audience; suddenly we’re taken into the world of buildings and walls where silence is louder than spoken words. One may conclude that filmmakers like Michelangelo Antonioni (L’Avventura) and Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad) favor visual composition over narrative which results in the most striking visuals with bizarre plot lines that lures the audience in and keeps them thoroughly engaged. None of these films follow the pattern of traditional narration and that is what sets them apart artistically from the rest of the cinema.

To maximize the understanding of such a complicated subject, much like the sublime that these films portray, I have organized my paper into three parts. The first part deals with narrative and nonnarrative filmmaking, how they differ from each other and how cinematography plays an important part in the latter. The second part focuses on case studies of Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad and Antonioni’s L’Avventura that tells how they are nonnarrative and filled with sublimity and absurdity. The last part focuses on denouement coming from open ends much like real life and how they give the audience the entertainment that they should deserve as opposed to watching cookie cutter narrative films.

NARRATIVE AND NONNARRATIVE FILMMAKING

Traditional narrative films use a formula comprising perfect plot points and sub plots that drive the story forward with a definitive beginning, middle and end. The audience comes into the theatre knowing what they are expecting: a full story where they don’t really have to apply too much of their imagination and interact with the visuals on screen to find out the emotional depth of a shot, scene or a whole sequence. The audiences crave films that take them away from reality and into a space where they can be entertained and not dwell on their problems. But what are these consistent narratives giving to the audience that they do not already see in our mundane lives? These linear, narrative stories are no different than real life, one where an outcome can easily be predicted based on the odds provided. How then are they transporting us to a different plane of entertainment? This is where experimental and non-narrative films come in and give the audience a fresh breath of air from the stagnant and overused plot lines. Where narrative films take narration as a primary focus, the non-narrative films take visual composition to be of utmost priority.

European films made in the early half of the 60s were extravagant and based on bizarre story lines, for example Federico Fellini’s 8 ½and La Dolce Vita, Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte and L’Eclisse. In Western Europe where frequent filmgoers valued the art of cinematography more than the art of narration. In that case artists to look up to are the great cinematographers like Sacha Vierny for Last Year at Marienbad, and Aldo Scavarda for L’Avventura. They helped us see the story within the undulations of the landscapes, the texture of the walls and the silence of the spaces. Immanuel Kant’s solution is that, “sublime are the ideas of reason, namely the ideas of absolute totality or absolute freedom” (Burnham). This is what these films portray– endless creation of freedom where there is no reason to believe that we are trapped within a narrative. The visual composition of these films was unparalleled and filled whatever gap that the traditional narrative had left. Without a narrative to focus on, the audience can actually focus more on visuals and nuances within the silences and long takes. The absurdity of the “disorient” in Last Year at Marienbad and the mindless adventure in L’Avventura are both examples of something sublime. Both the films have stories that are driven by something unfathomable and something beyond their control. If Kant could talk about the sublime in this situation, he would most likely say that the sublimity in these films is formless and even beautiful.

What narratives give us is just the forefront of what can be done with film as an art form, but non-narrative films actually push the boundaries and create another level of thought process that requires a lot more engagement from the side of the audience. This, in turn, means that it has now become an art form that actively engages both the artist and the viewer. The aftermath of this interaction stays with the viewer even after the film is over. Those visuals of the grandiose hotel in Marienbad with still-like shots of people just standing around, motionless, gives the audience a chance to focus on the pauses and what they mean. Should they be trusting the narrator? Should they focus on the present or the past– what is the difference between them? Vierny does an impeccable job at capturing these small moments that hold invaluable potential of the absurdity of the situation; the dolly in and out the endless confusing corridors is just as mystifying as the story of the man and woman meeting there a year ago. All that information is perceived just from watching the visuals and listening in on the periodic dialogues. Here, there is no need of a narrative because the constant back and forth of scenes, seemingly from the past and present, is all that is needed to create an intrigue and wanting more.

CASE STUDIES: SUBLIME AND ABSURD IN L’AVVENTURA AND LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD

In L’Avventura, Scavarda picks his moments under the direction of Antonioni to linger just a little longer on shots that would otherwise be strange to linger on, hence making them appear larger than life and enigmatic. In the essay, The Sublime and the Disaster, author Angelo Restivo writes, “In L’Avventura, the sublime of nature was still possible, in the mysterious waterspout and in the storm that carries Anna mysteriously away…”(Restivo). This feeling of supernatural follows the characters as they set out on a futile attempt to recover their friend. This is where the audience is actively being pulled in– questioning every move and every place that Claudia and Sandro go to. Will Anna be there? Or is she just a figment of their imagination who lurks in the shadows creating doubt in their minds? These are the questions that the average audience asks when they see these two films and for good reason. Art should provoke feelings strong enough to question everything about its nature otherwise it has not served its purpose. Narrative films don’t have this incentive as they all follow a structure that has already answered all questions for the audience– one could be numb the entire time but still get out of the theatre knowing that they watched something that did not have that much of an impact.

For the two films like Last Year at Marienbad and L’Avventura, the visuals to the audience were almost like uncontrollable dream-like sequences put together. The sequence of the events could in no way be expected, and when they were put together, it made them more intriguing. Non-narrative films and dreams are both reminiscent of an enigmatic phenomenon that humans can’t wrap their heads around hence it feels better to speculate exactly what will happen in a story and have an idea of the plot before going in to watch it. The sublime and absurdity of both Last Year at Marienbad and L’Avventura can be tied to the idea of an oneiric space that both the films inhabit. In the article “Room, Door Room’: Oneiric space in L’Avventura and Last Year in Marienbad”author Edward P. Wilson explains the non-narrative structure of the film in terms of categorizing them as lucid and nonlucid dreaming. L’Avventura forms itself a nonlucid dream whereas Last Year at Marienbad forms itself as a lucid dream. L’Avventura starts by an introduction to a girl Anna, but shortly after she’s not the focus anymore and disappears into nothingness. We’re drifting through space and time unaware of what the characters are doing exactly. Are they looking for Anna or are they looking for themselves in the infinite space that they find themselves in? On the other hand, Last Year at Marienbad, as said by Wilson, “…displays an awareness of its own vivid absurdity as it locks and focuses into space, cultivates in manipulations of time, setting and light” (Wilson 163). As much as these two films differ in their content, their non narrative structure makes them equally similar. Both the films struggle with finding a middle ground where two parallels would meet, but scene after scene they keep missing each other. L’Avventura has Anna as one parallel and Claudia (with Sandro) as the other. The search for Anna on the rocky island and then in haphazard places leads the audience to believe that Anna is a figment of their imagination and they’re in a dream-like loop where the only thing that could connect Sandro and Claudia is Anna. However, they never find her and just like that the film ends–without a catharsis. Something very similar happens in Last Year at Marienbad– the man and woman (no names are given to characters) are two parallels who struggle to meet as the man recounts their short-lived romance last year at the same hotel that they are staying at now. The connection here is the “past” which the woman seems to be painfully unaware of, and within this, the audience is left with millions of questions and untold answers to the silences and repeated words along the corridors of the hotel.

CATHARSIS FROM OPEN ENDS

In the book At the Edges of Thought, author Craig Lundy quotes Michelangelo Antonioni in regard to his non-narrative films: “When everything has been said, when the main scene seems over, there is what comes afterwards…” (Lundy 325) and it can be agreed that these films do leave a lot to the audience’s imaginations. In the book, The Open work, by Umberto Eco, translator Anna Cancogni translates Eco’s words about L’Avventura:

If it lacks a plot, it is because the director wanted to provoke a feeling of suspension, of indeterminateness, in his audience—because he wanted to frustrate their ‘romantic’ expectations and plunge them into a fiction (in itself, already a filtered life) that would force them to find their way amid all sorts of intellectual and moral dilemmas. (Eco 116)

Mimesis was a prominent factor that drove Antonioni’s creativity in making his trilogy: L’Avventura, La Notteand L’Eclisse. Both Antonioni’s and Resnais’ visions for their films were larger than life, and they saw catharsis in open ended conclusions. Antonioni especially believed that life was unpredictable and so he wanted to mirror that onto the screen. The denouement provided by these two films is as transcendent as it can get; it defies expectations and takes our imaginations on a wild ride.

CONCLUSION

Consider a director’s job well done when the audience leaves the movie theatre actively thinking of the myriad of possibilities about how the ending could have been explained. These films give a new meaning to the art of filmmaking– it can be anything that filmmakers envision it to be. There is absolutely no requirement to follow narrative structures and get caught up in the cookie cutter system of plots. It will never be wrong to experiment with narratives just as long as it is agreed that visuals play a bigger role in films than stories because without a visual stimulation there is no story. In conclusion thesublimity and absurdity of these films obviously cannot be explained (open to infinite interpretations) because they are supposed to be nothing, something but also everything and then something more.

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Works Cited

Burnham, Douglas. “Immanuel Kant: Aesthetics.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.iep.utm.edu/kantaest/#SH2c. Web.

Eco, Umberto. “Chance and Plot: Television and Aesthetics .” The Open Work, translated by Anna Cancogni, Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 116. Print.

Last Year at Marienbad.Directed by Alain Resnais, performances by Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi, Cocinor, 1961.

Lundy, Craig. “Deleuze, Antonioni and the Kantian Lineage of Modern Cinema.” At the Edges of Thought: Deleuze and Post-Kantian Philosophy, Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2015, p. 325. Print.

Restivo, Angelo. The Sublime and the Disaster. Gale. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=edsglr&AN=edsgcl.H1100084883&site=eds-live&scope=site&custid=s7614884. Accessed March 3. 2019. Web.

Wilson, Edward P. “‘Room, Door Room’: Oneiric Space in L’Avventura and Last Year in Marienbad.” Dreaming, vol. 28, no. 2, June 2018, pp. 162–168. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1037/drm0000075. Web.