Word: markered
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...generality writer banks on the knowledge possessed by the grader, hoping the marker will read things into his essay...
...Marker is especially careful not to integrate Koumiko and the city whenever the two come in direct contact. Koumiko is isolated when she is walking, behind a train window when she looks at the countryside, or present on the soundtrack but absent from the screen. In one sequence, we see Koumiko walking down a street next to a man whose face is obscured by a mirror he is carrying. Koumiko herself is not reflected in the mirror. She repeatedly looks to her right, then turns her head to see the same view in the mirror. As she does...
This is a key to the whole film. While apparently feeling constrained to show tradition and the recent westernization in close proximity, Marker carefully avoids cutting which would imply an ironic intent. No attempt is made to explain the westernization of Japan, nor is the modern seen as un-Japanese. Like Koumiko and the city, tradition and modernity exist within the same framework, and any effect that the one has upon the other is not readily discernible to the outsider. The outsider can merely present an image, which is nothing more than a concrete memory...
...Koumiko mystery cannot be solved. From the first shot of Koumiko, an extreme close-up of her eyes, she is seen as a love object. Since the film was edited in France (a fact purposely presented to the audience), it is clear that Koumiko is a memory. Marker is an outsider to Koumiko not only because he is a European but because he is a man. (The similarities between this and Hiroshima, Mon Amour are obvious and, I believe, intentional.) Solving the mystery would destroy the romantic quality both of the woman and of the memory...
...romantic vision which depends on maintaining mystery, on refusing to give rational explanations of people and cities, is one which denies the possibilities of objective truth. By using documentary materials to establish a romantic truth. Marker places himself in a diametrically opposite position from the American documentarians. For Marker, truth is a subset of cinema. TERRY CURTIS...