Chris Marker on UK DVD: LEVEL 5 review

For anyone watching Chris Marker's Level 5 now, you may find it hard to believe this is a film released just two years before The Matrix. Obviously there's nothing wrong with low-budget science fiction, and Marker clearly has some understanding of how to work with limited resources, but Level 5 feels like a case of the cult filmmaker's ambition completely running away with him. Like his documentary Sans Soleil, Level 5 uses a fictional narrative device to frame a searching, poetic exploration of some thought-provoking subject matter, and like Sans Soleil there are some truly stunning moments here, where a single line can be as devastating as any fictional Big Reveal. But unlike Sans Soleil, Level 5's framing device never really convinces. The writing in these sections is uneasy and awkward at best, horrendously grating at worst, and Marker's obvious love for the possibilities of digital multimedia can't stop the visuals from looking laughably cheap.

Level 5 sees Marker returns to his fascination with history, how much hinges on the way a single momentous event plays out and how we interpret that after the fact. It's about war: more specifically the fighting in the Okinawan islands of Japan at the end of World War II. Laura (Catherine Belkhodja) is a programmer tasked with creating a strategy game where players can re-enact the conflict, but as she researches that period of history she starts to question whether the project has any meaningful viability. Marker collects her video diary, and in attempting to make sense of it attempts to research the same things for himself. Level 5 cuts between Belkhodja speaking to camera, and Marker roaming Japan, interspersed with archival footage, talking heads and crude FX to illustrate Laura's game, or her travels through a fictional cyberspace network trying to dredge up more information she can use to get it finished.

Crude is arguably too kind: to be blunt, far too much of the opening act of Level 5 is almost completely lacking in any kind of visual artistry or interest. Laura's game is little more than a clumsy slideshow linking her diary extracts to Marker's interviews or grainy stock footage - it's jarring, an obvious contrivance and even by the standards of the time completely forestalls any suspension of disbelief. The cyberspace network is even worse, so amateurish as to be laughable, revelling in simple visual tricks that add less than nothing to the substance of the film. Belkhodja handles the material fairly well, and Marker's writing still has obvious emotional weight, launching straight into the main narrative themes and plot threads almost right from the start. But it's mired in the dreadful presentation to such a degree, even stooping to cheap, sentimental linguistic tricks (computers can't process natural language? Who'd have thought?) the film starts to feel like a slog.

The thing is, for those who persevere, it does get a lot better. Taken more as another of Marker's video essays, Level 5 is shockingly powerful at times, far more effective than countless war films since. There's the same sense of skipping between seemingly unconnected subjects with breathtaking ease, such as Belkhodja pointing out one of the earliest Western records of Okinawa is Napoleon's disgust that the islanders had no interest in waging war, then Marker musing on the mass suicides ahead of the US invasion, propaganda on both sides of the conflict, the cultural role of Japanese survivors and differing attitudes to the purpose memory serves, all of it - thematically at least - flowing almost effortlessly. Marker slips in some staggering body-blows with barely any fanfare; one second he's discussing one of Okinawa's better-known tragedies in easy euphemisms, the next emphasising what this really meant with a brutally honest catalogue of horrors. And the slowly dawning awareness of one of his interview subjects' identity is the kind of thing to send M. Night Shyamalan into hysterics.

But sooner or later Marker returns to Level 5's meta-narrative, and the results invariably disappoint. Belkhodja is good, and there's a definite sense of rising sadness and frustration to her performance as the film goes on, but there are moments here no-one could sell. An anguished conversation with a stuffed parrot is the kind of laboured pretension to greatness that's begging to be mercilessly spoofed - pretentious, as in Marker gives every sign he wants this to be a moment of intimate soul-searching, but it's just unintentionally hilarious. Even the title refers to a fumbled metaphor - it's the kind of spiritual analogy someone like Lee Chang-Dong could pen in his sleep, but although Marker does give the over-arching plot some closure it's so trite it fails to have any real impact.

Anyone interested in Marker's work or what the documentary format can achieve should still see Level 5. Again, this is a film of tremendous power - Marker's eye for an image and ability to talk about that image at length so eloquently it commands attention have few, if any equals. There are moments that stick with you, haunting moments of free association, like the power of the observer to influence events or even something as simple as what music one of the Japanese commanders on Okinawa would have been listening to when he committed ritual suicide. Technically, though, it's not great. Consider Level 5 recommended, but with a hefty word of caution; Marker's film is a stern lesson on the risks associated with tying your artistic vision to emerging technology as much as a meditation on the horrors of war, or mankind's capacity for savagery and, ultimately, peaceful reconciliation.

THE DISC:

Optimum Home Entertainment are releasing Level 5 on a UK DVD under their Optimum Classics label, available to buy from August 22nd. This is a bare-bones release, liable to be mostly of interest to Chris Marker fans who want a complete collection of the man's work available on home video, though Optimum can be excused to some extent given the lo-fi nature of the film would gain little, if anything, from expensive remastering. The disc launches straight into a static menu, which is decidedly ugly but easy enough to navigate. The film has been divided into eight chapter stops.

Level 5 comes with the original French audio track in mono 2.0, which performs adequately enough. There's very little especially cinematic about the film, let alone the score or dialogue - no booming crescendos or voices raised particularly high - so no-one speakers should struggle to cope. English subtitles are fixed, and though they're mostly as well-written as those used on the DVD collecting La Jetée and Sans Soleil there are definite passages where the translation seems to become markedly lazy, using abbreviation and colloquialisms inappropriately or letting errors slip in.

The picture doesn't impress, but like La Jetée and Sans Soleil this is more down to Optimum leaving the source material untouched and Marker not being overly concerned about a consistently pristine picture. Level 5 draws on a wide variety of footage, from grainy archival documentaries to computer graphics to talking heads, and none of it is especially glossy. Sometimes, like the sections where Laura (Catherine Belkhodja) talks to camera, it's arguably too clean, making the film look even more like a cheap TV production. For the most part it doesn't spoil what enjoyment there is to be had but prospective buyers should still keep this in mind. There are no extras of any kind.

Next to the films that made his name, like La Jetée and Sans Soleil, Chris Marker's Level 5 feels like something of a misfire. There's plenty of thought-provoking material here, weaving the director's favoured themes through a look at war and history as written by the winners, but the framing device he employs feels like a horrible mistake, leading to any number of painfully melodramatic moments which all but derail the film. Completists and fans of insightful documentary work should definitely consider Optimum Home Entertainment's UK DVD, but this is far from the best introduction to Marker's work and for the more casual viewer only rates a cautious recommendation at best.

(Thanks go to Optimum Home Entertainment and EM Foundation PR for facilitating this review.)