The Un-Understandability of ‘Last Year at Marienbad’

Cornell Cinema recently showed the 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad, a French film about an old hotel populated by wealthy guests. It focuses on an unnamed man, the narrator, who aggressively insists that he had met the female protagonist, an unnamed woman, one year ago and she promised to give him an answer as to whether or not they could be in a relationship. She, however, has no memory of ever meeting him. Most of the movie consists of the man trying to convince her that his memory is accurate and hers is inaccurate. He wants her to leave the second unnamed male character who may or may not be her husband, which, at the end of the movie, she does.