824 Muriel, or The Time of Return

[feihong]

Unquestionably it's a movie you have to put work in to really understand everything, but I've always seen it as a stunning success (Je T'aime, Je T'aime, which utilizes a very similar technique, is for me much less affecting). I don't really feel the need to read that article in whole––simply because I disagree immediately with the article's premise––but I would say just from the piece you quoted that to demand a pacy feeling in a movie like this feels really pointless. The film is on one level about the intimate feelings in our lives––some of which include memories, dreams, and ideals––which pull us away from one another. Hardly anything really "happens" in Muriel––it has the feel of real life in a first-world western country, in which so many people's lives drag on, maintaining a sort of placidity, without clear demarcation and interruption (although WWII and the French-Algerian war loom in the background as clear dividing lines between generations, between people). So that idea that it has to pick up the pace to keep our interest seems very misguided, in the sense that it's not a feasible way to appreciate this movie.

[ando]

This came on the 24/7 CC stream yesterday afternoon and transfixed me with little effort on my part to comprehend what was transpiring. The story is simple enough. But I felt a mixture of admiration and bewilderment at the ultimate objective of Resnais’ editing style. I’m not sure if there really is one, other than receiving the kind of pleasure you get from listening to a great turntablist (expert hip hop dj) massacre and reassemble four or five classic funk tracks simultaneously. “I love how he came in with that!” or “Nice transition!” or “Damn, he’s spending a lot of time here…” or “Wait, what was that jump?!!”

You get the picture. It’s an high artistic bar that I don’t think I’ve seen repeated as successfully as Muriel. Then again, I’ve yet to watch Marienband. But that would be another backward move.

[olmo]

This came on the 24/7 CC stream yesterday afternoon and transfixed me with little effort on my part to comprehend what was transpiring. The story is simple enough. But I felt a mixture of admiration and bewilderment at the ultimate objective of Resnais’ editing style. I’m not sure if there really is one, other than receiving the kind of pleasure you get from listening to a great turntablist (expert hip hop dj) massacre and reassemble gour or five classic funk tracks simultaneously. “I love how he came in with that!” or “Nice transition!” or “Damn, he’s spending a lot of time here…” or “Wait, what was that jump?!!”

You get the picture. It’s an high artistic bar that I don’t think I’ve seen repeated as successfully as Muriel. Then again, I’ve yet to watch Marienband. But that would be another backward move.

I took the editing style of fracturing the narrative, to be an attempt in conveying the protagonists inner thought.

It really made a huge impression on me, I tried to write about my thoughts on it, whether I'm accurate or not on Resnais' intentions it is how I feel about Muriel.

[ando]

I took the editing style of fracturing the narrative, to be an attempt in conveying the protagonists inner thought.

That’s precisely what I meant by stream-of-consciousness dodge ball - several characters are participating in this mental sparring of grievances beknownst only to the audience. It’s fun for a spell but if you can’t decipher a pattern or discern a rhythm (particularly in the editing) it can come off as perplexity for its own sake. In the end I feel it trivializes the character’s motivations as the method of storytelling becomes more compelling - certainly more memorable - than the story itself. And it doesn’t feel seamless enough to say it’s one and the same. But perhaps, as you point out, relationship, as this rather mad jostling of fragments is a part of what Resnais is attempting to convey.

Thanks for the link.