barryneuman

(A) Torzija is a well made film if you consider only the most superficial aspects of movie making and its well polished TV-like style left me absolutely cold. Instead of depicting the complexity and ambiguity of human beings under extreme pressure, the director chooses to cram as much easy (or cheesy) emotion as possible into the short narrative and has no insight to offer other than an overstated and heavy handed "art relieves suffering" motif as the choir's singing drowns out the sound of the bombs.

I know nothing of the director and his background and it's possible he has first hand experience with living through war and bombing. But sadly this would make the film even more disappointing. We can only hope that there are other new directors from the former Yugoslavia area that are philosophically and artistically equipped to depict the complex situation they have lived through and which continue to shape their lives.

Von Triers graduation film is the work of a young director with a vision and a firm grip of his medium. Even though every other scene (or individual shot for that matter) has been lifted from Tarkovsky's films or Bertolucci's "The Conformist" the film has a gripping mood and qualities that cannot be ignored - the lesson of this must be: if you steal, steal from the best. Von Trier would later develop this style into his fascinating and original "Europa", before he with "Breaking the Waves" abandoned all this for Cassavettes style hand held camera and more conventional, naturalistic performances. A pity.

This is truly one of the masterpieces of cinema and one of the very few truly perfect films. There are few other films where a whole new technique has been invented to tell a story, and what is all the more striking is that the form he has found (still photos with one brief moment of movement) express the themes and atmosphere of the film perfectly. Without revealing too much I must also say that the cyclic structure of the film provides one of the most satisfying resolutions I've ever seen in a film. It might seem like a contradiction, but "La Jetee" is an avante garde film which is at the same time one of the most moving and touching films you will ever see.

This is sadly the only work of (pure) fiction by Marker, but you should also check out "Sans Soleil" - again a completely original film, but oriented more towards the documentary form this time. In a beautiful sequence Marker revisits "La Jetee" and acknowledges his debt to Hitchcock and "Vertigo". Another must-see by one of the most original Nouvelle Vague directors.