Sans Soleil, an “experimental” film from director Chris Marker (perhaps best known for La Jetée, which inspired Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys), is a pretentious love-it-or-hate-it piece of cinema. A 100-minute collage of disjointed images from around the world (with a heavy emphasis on Japan and Bissau), Sans Soleil is complemented by the existential elliptical musings of the narrator (who reads aloud the recordings of a fictional cameraman named Sandor Krasna). While it could be argued that the film is only about memory and time, this would be an attempt to organize what is essentially a random series of stream-of-consciousness philosophical musings.
To be fair, there are moments when some of what Marker has to say is at least fascinating, if not interesting. However, he never lingers on any one subject long enough for it to bear fruit, preferring to move on to something else. His monologues are philosophically pedantic. He lectures a lot, and many of the dialogues have an elitist tone that hints that the director believes he is revealing amazing truths. The images are banal by design. (Something of a confession early in the process when he offers this comment: “I have traveled the world several times, and now I am only interested in banality.”) Few, if any, of them remain in the memory. The film flits from topic to topic like a crazed butterfly, one minute offering insight into revolutionary thinking, the next offering deconstruction of dizziness.
There is no single storyline to speak of. In the film, a female narrator (Alexandra Stewart in the English version) reads letters written to her by Krasna (Marker’s pseudonym) while clips he has shot are played on the screen. This gives Marker the freedom to express himself on any topic that strikes his fancy. The title Sans Soleil (or without the sun in English) refers to a science fiction film that he is planning but does not plan to make. Like many of his other discourses, it touches on ideas about time, memory, and how they are interconnected.
A connection can be made between Sans Soleil and Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi. Both films rely primarily on images to convey a message. The difference is that while Reggio has arranged the visual elements of his film with great care, aiming at times to evoke awe and wonder, Marker’s approach is more haphazard and grounded. Aurally, Koyaaniskaqi relied on Philip Glass’s score. Sans Soleil replaces this with Stewart’s voice.
Four versions of Sans Soleil were created at the time of its release. There are no visual differences, but each has a completely different soundtrack. The film was released in English (narrated by Stewart, a French actress of Canadian descent), French (Florence Delay), Japanese (Ryoko Ikeda) and German (Charlotte Kerr). There is no reason to favor one over the other.
