La Jetée

Julie Elman
Digital Videography
Digital Trek 2009
La Jetée
La Jetée is a short, black and white, part love story, part sci-fi film that captures the essence of the adage, “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too”. From the initial still frames, La Jetée opens with dark music and sparse narration, as it captures images of Paris, post-WWWIII and nuclear destruction; I listened to my gut telling me that this film would not have a happy ending.
In the film, the opposing groups are the victors and the overpowered. As a result of their desperation, a group of scientists who retreated underground are seeking to save the future of humanity by training an individual to travel back in time and change the course of history. However, in their attempt to prepare the time traveler to save the world, their sadistic behaviors inflict pain and death upon their subjects. As the narrator explains, “Some died and some went crazy”. For me, this tyrannical behavior reflects the fact that these individuals acted as though they had the right to display utter disrespect for human life in the name of their cause; that is, power corrupts. Our history books note many similar violations of human rights and ethics in the name of security.
On a personal note, my experiences at the Museum of Resistance and Deportation closely connect to the messages I gleamed from watching La Jetée and from my knowledge about the Holocaust during WWII. In fact, in the museum there was a display that explained how the Nazi’s would take some of the prisoners behind closed doors and carry out experiments on them and enjoy watching them suffer just as the scientists had during the movie. Actually, the Nazi’s, the scientists in the film, and members of the French Resistance were all working towards their image of a better future.
The time traveler was selected because of his fixation on a past memory-a single memory just like a single frame of this film. Despite the scientists best attempts to condition him to behave so that when he time travels he will change the future, the traveler opts for the potential of love with a women his past over a life in the future without her. To me, this says that the powerful people in a society can not totally destroy man’s spirit of humanity and love. Another message that I derive from the movie is that is it important to live in the present. Unfortunately for the time traveler, he opted to live through his memories; a choice that did not allow him to live. Oh, the things people do for love.