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FILM COMMENT
May/June 2003
CHRIS MARKER: SHOCK OF THE OLD
by By Catherine Lupton
Above: Level Five
I remember discussing Chris Marker's last feature film, Level Five, with a friend of mine when it first came out. She was generally enthusiastic, but irritated by what she described as "an old man's view of the Internet." I did not share her annoyance, but I could see what she meant. Even at the moment of its release, before the impact of the accelerated obsolescence that today makes the film look definitively dated, the computer hardware and digital hypermedia effects - which both appear in
Level Five as characters, and had been used to create it - looked distinctly quaint, old-fashioned, and clumsy. The Apple II GS that is seen in the film was not a recent model, with its low-resolution screen and discolored plastic casing. I admired the "Gallery of Masks" sequence for its lateral evocation of "Laura" (Catherine Belkhodja) as a mise-en-abyme of receding and ambiguous projections, and for Marker's evident relish in amusing himself with Roger Wagner's Hyperstudio; but nevertheless I winced inwardly at the awkwardness and tackiness of the effects, their uncomfortable echo of a late Seventies music video reinforced by a brashly pounding soundtrack.
You can read the complete version of this article in the May/June 2003 print edition of Film Comment.
© 2003 by Catherine Lupton
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