Le temps retrouvé, d'après l'oeuvre de Marcel Proust

Well, I had only ever heard of Proust before this film from a Monty Python sketch of the "Summarise Proust competition" (contestants had to summarise In Search of Lost Time once in evening wear and once in bathing suit). I was worried I might hate this film, not knowing anything about Proust other than he wrote a multi-volumed masterwork about time and memory. Then I saw it...wow! I cannot praise Mr Ruiz enough for what he has achieved. The camera work, sets, and lighting are stunning. As Marcel's memory takes him back and forth through his life, the sets and furniture often move around whilst the scene is played out - all emphasising the fragility and hallucinatory qualities of his memory. And there is the music...wow again. It is never intrusive but always creates the perfect background to what is happening on screen. It is not overly sentimental and never tries to force you into feeling emotion (unlike someone like John Williams/S. Spielberg who tries to ram it down your throat). As for plot, many characters and relationships are never fully explained or revealed. Many reviewers seem offended that a film expects them to display attention and interest, but I feel that they're missing the point. Plot is often not the point of the film, instead it is a film about time and memory (hence the title!). Plot is not allowed to dominate the narrative structure, it is the emotions and memory of Marcel. The most offensive thing that some other reviewers seem to find about this film is that it is novel and original - what a crime!! I had never read Proust before I saw this film, but I have a long enough attention span and an open enough mind to appreciate the sheer beauty of its images and the wonderful originality of its style. I urge anyone remotely appreciative of excellent filmmaking to see this film. It might even, as it has with me, motivate you to read the book. I am now three and a third volumes in and it is the greatest and most beautifully written novel I have ever read in my life. Thank you Mr Ruiz and thank you Marcel! SEE THIS FILM NOW!!!

I have read very little of Proust's great work. I found TIME REGAINED to be a marvelous film, one which further encourages me to read REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST in the future. The movie seems to me to be divided, unintentionally, into three parts. In the first, the photography is exceptional, the use of a moving camera among the best I have seen. This part deserves comparison with the Fellini films mentioned in another comment. However, the second section, which deals mostly with homosexual relationships, sees the imaginative direction almost grind to a halt. In the final section, some wonderful direction takes place again. I think it would have been helpful if the characters had worn name tags (just kidding). The acting was very good, and John Malkovich was outstanding. I saw a video of SWANN IN LOVE (the first volume of the work), and TIME REGAINED was infinitely superior as a filmgoing experience.

I saw the film in the theater when it first came out. Now, I am viewing it once again on video. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten around to reading any Proust yet. But the film is beautiful. There is one scene in particular at a party I was quite taken by. Marcel is in this very crowded room,, where he seems to know everyone. yet, he seems to feel alone, detached form all the ridiculous social coteries and gossip. he finds comfort in his memories. the sound or smell or sight of something, instantly sends him back in time. he remembers an inconsequential moment. a moment in time when things were better, more bearable. or were they? did we really use our memories as a false comforting, a way to remember one's past as a better time, wishing things could be like that again. i loved the way raoul ruiz filmed it. the camera seems at moments to be floating in the air. at times, it seems the ground where the actors are situated is moving, rather than the camera itself. the acting is wonderful. and the music is eerily touching. a surreally satisfying film.

This ambitious attempt to convey the spirit and content of Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu is largely successful, in my view, for it faithfully reflects the impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness quality of the epic work of literature. There is no logical plot or or narrative arc because Proust's work is something altogether different from the classical novel.

My best guess is that those who dislike this film have never read the books, which is admittedly difficult to do, and for the very same reasons: no hooks, no turning points, nothing remotely resembling the classical notion of "story". The work is basically a pastiche of memories and dreams. What matter above all in the film are the images, and they are extremely well done. Great cinematography and good acting all around. Bravo!

"La viande est bonne!"

TIME REGAINED

(Fr., dir. Raul Ruiz, 165 min.) doesn't even pretend to stand on its own; is an homage useless and unintelligible to anyone who hasn't read and remembered Remembrance of Things Past. Having digested only the first 2 of the 7 novels which comprise this opus, and this long enough ago to have allowed memory of them to deteriorate, I confess much of the film remained beyond me. But even with the book as scorecard, the film functions as hardly more than a metasoap opera, a costume pageant of the book's characters who parade by, talk and walk, without ever coming to life.

Nothing much happens onscreen; the movie is practically void of action. Despite impeccable staging, it consists largely of one conversation after another, endless scenes of dinners, lunches, social gatherings, etc., in which people dispassionately discuss events and relationships that have already transpired elsewhere. To make up for this, Ruiz moves furniture about, has near and far fields migrate disjointedly in opposite directions, litters the screen with symbols and leitmotivs, and mingles different times in the same frame, so that, like Bruce Willis in Disney's Kid, Proust observes, is observed by, and even converses with his younger self. Scenes shift so fluidly back and forth through time that one easily gets lost, disoriented, unless thoroughly familiar with the book.

The movie fails, has to fail, because of the impossibility of translating the book to film. The book is too introverted, too subjective, too fundamentally static and multilayered. Cinema-time is linear and dynamic; even though it can create the illusion of multiple things happening at once, it is restricted to a sequence of events, actions, happening one after another, one at a time, all of which are, above all, visual, graphic, right there before your eyes. The novel, however, layers the past on the present so that the two effectively coexist, are simultaneous; and delves into subjective states and ideas, interweaves mood, reminiscence, and philosophizing inseparably with place and person. The subject of time and memory, as elusive and evocative as it is on the page, is near nigh impossible to get hold of with film, that most literal and physical of mediums. It's like trying to photograph the passage of mist, of fog--all you see is a mess of grey.

The movie also fails because it can only gloss the myriad details with which the novels slowly, deliberately mount their magnificent edifice. In the end, all you get here is a rushed visit, a mad dash through a museum of images, a disordered travelogue of the psyche.