Barely released theatrically in the U.S., French New Wave auteur Chris Marker's haunting 1996 film Level Five—a fusion of documentary, essay, and fiction—tackles the director's familiar themes about the connections of history, image, and memory through the passage of time. In no sense a conventional story, the film's narrative spine is a loose tale about a video game developer, Laura (Catherine Belkhodja), whose late partner in life and work left her with an unfinished project that improbably turns a real-life Japanese tragedy during World War II into a game with different outcomes. Laura's musings on her research into mass deaths during the Battle of Okinawa becomes a bridge for Marker's use of archival materials (including his own 1985 documentary footage about Okinawa) and futuristic, mosaic-like images that digitally overlap, creating an unsettling effect of fixed facts being eclipsed by subjective human recollections. A strange and remarkable late work by the director of the 1962 classic La Jetée that now seems more prescient than ever, this is highly recommended. (T. Keogh)
Level Five
Icarus, 106 min., not rated, DVD: $29.98 Volume 30, Issue 1
Level Five
Star Ratings
As of March 2022, Video Librarian has changed from a four-star rating system to a five-star one. This change allows our reviewers to have a wider range of critical viewpoints, as well as to synchronize with Google’s rating structure. This change affects all reviews from March 2022 onwards. All reviews from before this period will still retain their original rating. Future film submissions will be considered our new 1-5 star criteria.
Order From Your Favorite Distributor Today: