Sans Soleil

We viewed the awkward documentary Sans Soleil in class the other week. This film was very strange, to put it lightly. It was almost telling a story in a way. The narrator was a woman. This is different on most accounts and caught my attention immediately because almost every single documentary I have watched before this used a male narrator to do the Voice of God. Why did the male director chose a female narrator when the film was also through a male cameraman? The only thing I can say is that the film was already strange enough, so why not add a female narration? The film was formed as a letter to someone dear of the filmmaker. The reader of the letter was the narrator, and the cameraman caught what the letter was saying through his camera lens. I honestly did not think he was capturing half of what the narrator was saying, but that is why film making is an art form.
Another thing I found interesting was the directors interests with the strange ways of the Japanese people. Well it is strange to us Americans because it is so foreign to us, but to them it is an everyday thing. One scene that interested me was the multiple cat temples and shrines. It seems to me that the Japanese have a sacred belief towards cats.


Another interesting thing about this film was the way the woman narrator was speaking the man's thoughts. One scene where I noticed this was when the cameraman was trying to gain eye contact with a random African woman. The narrator was talking of how the woman would look up, and then she would look away. All of this that she was saying was what the cameraman was portraying, but it was what the writer's (a.k.a. the director) letter that she was reading.
When all is said and done Sans Soleil is one of the most strange and awkward films that I have viewed and will always stay at the top of that list for me.