Muriel or, The Time Of Return

One of the special features on the Criterion Collection's Blu-ray release of the late Alain Resnais' "Muriel, or The Time of Return" is an excerpt from a documentary made for French television entitled "Une approche d'Alain Resnais, r�volutionnaire discret."

On the disc, it's listed under its original French-language title. But if you were to translate it, you'd get "An Approach of Alain Resnais, Discreet Revolutionary." The excerpt itself -- which contains comments from author Gaston Bounoure and screenwriter Jean Cayrol -- is hardly comprehensive. It offers a brief description of "Muriel," and some comments on the way that the French-Algerian War ties into the film's narrative. And while the title of that excerpt is instructive, it can also be misleading. The form of Resnais' early feature-length movies -- "Muriel" was released in 1963, after his canonical efforts "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and "Last Year at Marienbad" -- truly did represent an aesthetic revolution. Resnais was centering his editing on the rhythms of his character's psychological states, rather than centering it on the linearity of their lives. These are formally radical works, and there's nothing discrete about the advances.

"Muriel" bases itself at the home of H�l�ne (Delphine Seyrig) in Boulogne-sur-Mer, and it follows the paths of the people who pass through it. But when it comes to the timeline, the details are deliberately shaky. Over the course of those vaguely-defined days and weeks, the returns of the title pile up. Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Kerien), one of H�l�ne's former lovers from the WWII-era (one she has sentimentalized in the decades since) returns to her space with the force of a nightmare. Bernard (Jean-Pierre Kerien), her stepson, returns from military service in Algeria with bad dreams of his own; he's transfixed by the eponymous figure, an Algerian girl who was tortured and killed before his own eyes.

In plotting out their reunions and subsequent dissolutions, Resnais and Cayrol slip in and out of individual moments and days. The film sits in for dinner-table conversations and caf� meetings, then slips out the door with deliberately-slippery ellipses. What his form is evoking is an innate sense of incompleteness. Just as memories and traumas have removed stability from the lives of his subjects, Resnais' form removes stability from the makeup of their own daily behavior. This film is at one with its characters: It's psychologically damaged, with wounds that can't be seen.

Criterion's Blu-ray release of the film includes a number of other extras in addition to the documentary except. Most of them are archived interviews with cast and crew members. A short interview with composer Hans Werner Henz, originally composed for television, starts us off, talking about the atypical creation of this movie's score (it was the first that the otherwise-accomplished Henz had worked on). An interview with Seyrig follows that up, in which she comments on the expansive working relationship she crafted with Resnais (she appeared in a number of his other works, including "Marienbad").

The final interview, and the longest of the group, is with writer Fran�ois Thomas, who offers a biographical overview of Resnais, and offers a reading of the director's constant treatment of certain themes (particularly the intersection of international conflict and personal memory). Liner notes (written by James Quandt) and a theatrical trailer (from the film's initial release) round out the Criterion package.

The high-definition presentation of the film is also worthy of note. This seems to be the first release of "Muriel" in the U.S. that respects the original aspect ratio and color palette seen in theatrical release. Resnais' "Muriel" may be based in its editing, but he was also a pictorial director, and his treatment of H�l�ne's spaces makes that apparent. The film often documents her possessions -- antiques, out of time, like herself -- in patiently-timed insert shots.

In his interview, Henz speaks about how he and Resnais aimed to achieve a rhythm that evoked opera, and the rigorously metered pacing of Resnais' film, in its editing and in its choice of images, establishes such a rhythm with personalized verve. The static treatments of the central home -- another object seemingly unstuck in time -- creates an almost trancelike inquiry into the relationship between people, their places, and their pasts. Perhaps the methods are discrete. But the effects are monumental.

"Muriel, or The Time of Return"
Blu-ray
$29.95
Criterion.com