Kristin  Seymour  

Response  to  The  Jette  

 

  The  film  The  Jette  was  very  confusing  as  a  contextual  piece  but  

composition  and  mechanical  wise  it  was  a  success  in  my  opinion.  The  

film  was  a  compilation  of  still  photographs  with  music  and  narration  in  

the  background.    

The  use  of  still  images  was  very  different  yet  interesting  

compared  to  what  I  am  used  to.  At  first  I  thought  of  it,  as  a  slideshow  

similar  to  one  that  iphoto  would  play  after  importing  images  off  a  

camera.  I  liked  the  photographs  being  used  to  create  a  film  because  it  

gave  me  time  to  look  around  the  image  and  get  every  meaning  out  of  it.  

When  watching  a  moving  animated  film  the  images  fly  by  so  fast  that  

viewers  miss  important  things  within  the  image.  Clearly  Marker  wanted  

a  far  deeper  connection  between  images  in  the  film  then  in  a  slideshow.  

I  felt  that  the  narration  might  have  helped  if  it  was  clearer  in  tone  and  in  

meaning.  The  narration  was  so  conceptual  that  I  did  not  understand  

much  of  it  at  all  and  began  to  realize  that  I  was  barely  even  paying  

attention  to  it  at  all.  I  began  to  pay  attention  to  the  images  and  the  

images  only.  My  mind  began  to  braid  the  images  together  to  try  and  

form  a  story.  Much  like  in  any  art  exhibition/film  the  conceptual  

meaning  that  the  artist  is  trying  to  convey  does  not  always  come  across  

to  the  viewer  in  the  same  way.  I  did  not  put  together  the  same  story  as  

Marker  intended.  I  would  not  have  known  he  was  trying  to  show  time  

travel  if  it  were  not  for  Colby  mentioning  it.  I  saw  the  film  as  a  man  

being  tortured  by  a  bunch  of  Nazi  scientists  in  a  cave  somewhere.  The  

man  was  looking  back  into  his  past  and  his  dreams.  I  did  not  think  he  

himself  was  actually  time  traveling.    

I  understood  the  idea  of  the  different  transitions  in  the  film  as  

meaning  different  things.  For  example,  the  fading  meant  that  the  events  

were  happening  at  the  same  time.  Fading  to  black  meant  a  new  set  of  

time  and  short  cuts  were  meant  to  shock  us  or  build  suspense.  The  

quick  animation  in  the  climax  of  the  film  was  very  surprising.  The  quick  

cuts  between  images  that  made  the  female  appear  as  if  she  were  moving  

were  very  successful.  I  can  only  image  the  people  who  first  watched  this  

movie  and  were  not  used  to  such  a  technique.  Also,  the  repetition  and  

re-­‐implementation  of  images  created  different  feelings.  When  the  photo  

of  the  hallway  was  placed  before  an  image  of  the  man  in  the  hammock  it  

was  scary.  It  was  meant  to  make  you  feel  as  if  you  were  heading  into  

torture,  but  when  the  same  hallway  image  was  placed  after  seeing  the  

man  it  appeared  as  an  escape.    

I  was  not  clear  about  the  meaning  or  intentions  of  Marker  until  I  

read  the  pdf  that  we  were  provided.  The  book  did  well  to  explain  the  

film  but  in  my  opinion  there  were  not  enough  images.  Also,  I  think  they  

should  have  been  placed  within  the  text  directly  before  or  after  the  

reference  to  them.  I  had  to  go  looking  for  the  images  the  writer  was  

talking  about.  I  really  enjoyed  some  of  the  quotes  from  the  film  that  

were  in  the  book  as  well  as  just  the  text  in  general.  Here  are  some  

notable  quotes  from  the  book  that  I  enjoyed  and  could  relate  to  real  life:  

 

“One  photographs  things  in  order  to  get  them  out  of  one’s  mind.”  

 

“Forgetting  is  not  an  abandonment  of  the  past,  but  permission  to  

elaborate,  to  reconstruct  differently”  

 

“How  it  is  that  memory  is  infected  by  the  photographic,  and,  

conversely  that  photographic  devices  have  come  to  serve  the  

requirements  of  memory.”  

 

“There  could  be  no  hope  ‘no  present  without  forgetfulness.  ’”  

 

“The  past  is  in  itself  a  question”