not as good as all the hype

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Visionary filmmaker Chris Marker creates a portrait of ever encroaching globalization in this 100 minute odyssey between the 'two poles of survival'.Probably one of the greatest 'avant-garde' films of all time, don't let its classification dissuade you. This is a very simple film with a very simple message: though time changes, what nourishes humanity remains constant, namely love, memory, hope, understanding, recognition and belonging. The only frustrating thing about this film is that one viewing is not enough. This is a work you will cherish re-watching for years to come. Direct cinema science-fiction set on Planet Earth.

I had to struggle over whether or not I could do this movie justice by writing a review of it after only seeing it once; it's definitely one of those films that, though you can understand it as it goes along, and it is not in any way what one would call difficult, is one that has so many different details and points that it seems relatively rude to try to shorten it down to a synopsis. Then again, as it's work in memory, impression, and time precludes, who's to say that the instant of reviewing it does it injustice merely by struggling with it's impression of it? Well okay, now I'm just being pretentious."Sans Soleil" can be generalized as an almost two-hour visual essay on memory, poetry, and imagery, based around Chris Marker's travels around the world, focusing mostly on Japan and Africa. It lacks the visceral and unsettling effects of his short "La Jetee", but it isn't like it's meant to be... though both films can be considered "contemplative", this one is much more meditative and philosophical, continually reworking it's ideas even to various points of self-awareness made ironic through the narrator's "He wrote... He said..." misdirection.For some reason, it may be impossible to describe just how such a film can be considered so striking and yet still sound so simple (read any review that likes it, they will be awed but there'll be doubt in the minds of any that have seen it that it couldn't possibly be all that). What's interesting about it is that it is, in fact, a very simple work, especially structurally. It is even in a way dated since it uses computer effects of the time that, though they still are used experimentally today, still feel older in a this-was-new-back-then-but-we're-past-it-now way. But still... somehow it works, gets under the skin, says things in ways that you think you understand and then snap too and realize that you've been so lost in what's been going on that you've not paid attention--or was it too much attention? It is, indeed, like it's own memory of itself.--PolarisDiB

yawn, lets bundle a bunch of disparate audio, visual and narrative elements together into a movie and call it art i lost count of the amount of times i rolled my eyes at the extremely poor use of sound in this piece. in particular the part where 80's spectrum game audio plays to a swinging owl shop sign/advert the only good bit in this is the section that analyses Japanese media (around 19mins 30 to 24mins 30). finally Marker looks at something about Japanese society that he can truly comment on in a constructive way, and its a pity the doc didn't entirely stick to this area unfortunately it veers off again into the clouds and looks at social/religious issues among other things, and overall its the type of thing that a pretentious media ma student might hand in for their final paper 'trippy' twaddle from a person in a creative trough, and not a patch on la jetee

I'm surprised to see that so many other reviewers tolerated and even loved SANS SOLEIL. In my opinion, SANS SOLEIL is an inferior version of KAYAANISQATSI (which was released the same year): while KAYAANISQATSI lets its images of different societies, machines, and crowds speak for themselves, Chris Marker layers a monologue of pseudo-intellectual babble over his. The footage itself is pretty interesting: we see Japanese people performing ancient purification rites, some nice shots of Iceland's lunar landscape, and other scenes from societies around the world, but the voice-over pretty much ruins it. It's like a failed poet hijacked National Geographic and forced them to make SANS SOLEIL instead of something interesting. Honestly, you could probably find more meaningful prose in a teenage goth's LiveJournal.I had a few ideological problems with the movie as well. Chris Marker (a Frenchman, I assume?) darted about in non-Western societies, viewing foreign people through a camera lens. He then mashed all the footage together, drawing inferences from the images which he then communicated to us, the (primarily Western) viewers through a voice-over. He never interviews anyone he films. His voice is the only one we hear, he is the sole authority who controls the information we receive, and as a result he can construct other cultures to fit a message of his choosing.What to the people living in the jungle have to say about life? That's what I'd like to know. But instead we hear through Marker that they are noble savages, free in their own way despite being so primitive, practicing mystical rituals the narrator doesn't actually comprehend, etc. Even Japanese TV somehow serves to illuminate Japanese culture for Marker, despite the fact that he admits he doesn't speak Japanese and can't understand a word of what's going on! Edmund Said explores this form of representation in his book "Orientalism," but basically I see Chris Marker as the Rudyard Kipling or Marco Polo of our day. He travels abroad, reports back to us with a romanticized description of other cultures (which the cultures themselves do not contribute to directly), we accept it, and the discourse ends. We never learn anything tangible, besides the fact that Marker found this experience to be personally significant in some vague way.Also, I had to close my ears while the narrator discusses Hitchcock's VERTIGO... I haven't seen that one yet and had a feeling Marker wouldn't include any spoiler warnings.