Sans soleil [Sunless] (1983)

(On Cable TV, October 2021) The personal essay is a form of documentary filmmaking that was relatively rare, often pretentious, but fascinating when done well. Such things are far more common nowadays with YouTube (where it’s often all opinion masquerading as fact), but in 1983 you had to have some financial backing to go to foreign destinations and deliver what’s essentially a travelogue mixed with random thoughts stemming from the trips. Let’s face it: much of writer-director Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil is almost unbearably self-absorbed, commenting on foreign cultures by using dodgy expressions and an outsider’s perspective. There’s some banal material passed as deep thoughts, and some moments that probably only made sense to Marker alone. But there are some better moments as well—an interesting discussion of Vertigo, or an amazed look at circa-1983 computer technology that anticipates many of the subsequent debates about our relationship to computers. (By coincidence, I happened to follow Sans Soleil with an up-to-the-moment look at Artificial Immortality, and one did much to inform the other.)  It would be an exaggeration to say that I liked Sans soleil, but it is an unusual video essay that often finds a fascinating streak.