10 Weird Movies That Purposely Tried To Confuse You

3. L'Année Dernière € Marienbad (Alain Resnais)

Alongside Meshes Of The Afternoon, Alain Resnais' L'Année Dernière € Marienbad is probably the most frequently cited film in discussions about narrative abstraction. Many have asked whether it's just an incomprehensible set of unrelated sequences that are weird for the sake of it. However, as with the others on this list, there should be no doubt: Marienbad is a no less than a surrealist comment on truth and fiction, as well as a deliberately chameleonic and unsolvable provocation to those voyeuristically seeking answers to the film's many enigmas. Resnais' film, set in a large mansion, is populated by unnamed figures, with its three main characters being referred to in the script as simply A (the lead actress), X (the lead actor) and M (the other main male in the story). It appears to set over at least two different time periods, but little attempt is made to distinguish between the two eras. X approaches A at the film's beginning, telling her that they met "last year at Marienbad" and that she is at the mansion in order to meet him. She persistently resists his advances, claiming never to have met him, despite certain shots seeming to depict a relationship between the characters (perhaps set in an earlier time period, though this is never made explicit). The third man, M, is purportedly the woman's husband and consistently outdoes his love rival throughout the film. Discontinuity and ambiguity are the two key descriptive words here. Monologues asking philosophical questions about "what really happened?" and conversational oddities such as "why don't you still want to remember anything?" suggest madness, memory loss and uncertainty throughout. Lots of gorgeous tracking shots of the mansion itself dominate the film, with elongated shadows doing little to clarify temporal positioning. Effectively, L'Année Dernière € Marienbad is set in multiple times and spaces at once, and also in absolutely no time or space at the same time. It simultaneously provides multiple questions and enigmas, but is also defined by its absolute refusal to offer any answers. In essence, it plays with the escapist fictions of cinematic mysteries while Resnais mockingly solves none of them. It is a puzzle box designed to do nothing but puzzle.