Self-cultivated enigma filmmaker Marker never made a conventional feature either before or after his most famous piece,
La Jetée, and
Sans Soleil, a form of clip and image-montage essay with the outward trappings of a documentary, is what might be considered characteristic of his oeuvre. It moves back and forth between Guinea-Bissau and Japan, seeking to wring out some overall picture of the human condition on approaching the twenty-first century from 'two extreme poles of survival'.
It contains some striking imagery and hits on a number of neat portentous observations on the societies it regards and on the nature of memory. It has, however, dated quite badly in parts and a modern viewer may find the pontification of the narrator at times unfocused and at worst condescendingly exoticising of the foreignness of the societies it surveys. But the angle of approach has to be applauded, if for uniqueness alone.
6/10
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