Reawakening Perception

In looking at Le Jetee I could not help but feel like I was experiencing a sensory overload as the images flashed by on the screen. Intervals play into each other as the viewer is consistently confronted with a metamorphosis of lightness and darkness, in addition to words, noises, and silence. Depth and perception are distorted by shadows that clearly constitute an example of Deleuze's any-space-whatevers. "Depth is the location of the struggle, which sometimes draws space into the bottomlessness of a black hole, and sometimes draws it towards a light" (p.111) The characters emerge from and disappear into shadows while the protagonist emerges in and out of consciousness. Our own perception is effected as we must use both the diegetic and non-diegetic clues to piece together the relationships between movement and images. The sounds can be broken down into parts that work to either guide us as the narration does, or distort our perception (which is the reaction I had to the unintelligible whispering sounds).  

The powerful scene where the girl comes alive was what challenged me the most. At this point my perception was more relaxed, my brain had figured out what was going on... in the foreground still images were dissolving into one another on the screen, and I had become accustom to hearing the words spoken by the narrator (as well as sounds from other sources) in the background. I was busy processing these frozen images as individual moments and as part of the whole. The scene is comprised of several close-ups of the girl sleeping which dissolve into each other, each image is slightly different then the previous, creating the effect of movement.  The interplay of light and shadow dance together to reinforce the sense of movement.  There is a subtle shift in the lighting  and suddenly the girl begins to move within the image and by simply blinking her eyes a few times she throws our sense of perception into complete chaos. I immediately questioned whether or not what I saw was real. I think this scene really encapsulates many of Deleuze's ideas and it really helped me to understand the meaning of the affective-image as well as several other Deleuzian concepts (there are obviously an infinite amount of relevant examples in Le Jetee). I'd be curious to hear what the rest of you thought about this film in relation to our class.