Director: Miguel Gomes
Writer: Telmo Churro, Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes, Mariana Ricardo
Stars: Gonçalo Waddington, Crista Alfaiate, Claudio de la Silva
Synopsis: Edward, civil servant, flees fiancee Molly on their wedding day in Rangoon, 1917. His travels replace panic with melancholy. Molly, set on marriage, amused by his escape, trails him across Asia.
In Chris Marker’s 1983 film, Sans Soleil, an unnamed woman (voiced by French academician and actress Florence Delay) narrates the thoughts, worries, and observations written by a world traveler, his perceptions visualized in words and images from various places like Japan, Iceland, Guinea-Bissou, and San Francisco. It is a travelog with plenty of philosophical reflections from the unknown scriptor of those letters. He speaks about time, memory, life and death, as well as how life on this planet has changed (and vastly increased or decreased in various aspects). Pictures of foreign countries through Marker’s lens turn into depictions of strangers’ daily living. Each frame is played like a memory from not only the photographer but also the one behind the camera–fragmented yet containing a sense of mysticism.
We travel the world with new eyes as Marker experiments with the form again after his revolutionary La Jetée in 1962. There’s something oddly fascinating about how Marker perceives this world that is entirely alien to him. You are drawn, yet detached; reality and dreams cinematically tether tin between the cultures depicted on-screen by some poignant conceptualizations of the worldwide view of life’s mundanity. Sans Soleil may be a travelog in its first layer. However, as it continues, the experimentalist documentary blossoms into a multilayered piece, with more to find upon each viewing. It seems that Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes has taken inspiration, both directly and indirectly, from Chris Marker’s documentary for his latest work, Grand Tour (playing at the New York Film Festival in the Main Slate), a magical film that sweeps through the many Asian countries where two lovers travel in their cat-and-mouse games towards a reunion of realization.
Both Sans Soleil and Grand Tour are unique forms of travelog, the former relying more on reality and the latter fiction, which breaks the form of the state of filmmaking. While Gomes does not reach Marker’s work’s limitless experimentation, he offers something different to the table, providing a fresh viewing at the festival–whose slate consists of some of the most inventive projects of the year–and in the international cinema circuit. It is kaleidoscopic in its own right, merging the old with the new, monochrome with color, and reality with fiction, employing footage by three different cinematographers (Gui Liang, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, and Rui Poças) and an overall sense of the esoteric behind the grounded.
Grand Tour, taking its title from the Asian Grand Tour, where tourists travel to different cities to experience new sights and cultures, is split into two parts, each following one side of the on-the-run lovers. The first half centers on British diplomat Edward Abbot (Gonçalo Waddington), stationed in colonial-era Burma (now Myanmar) in 1918. We meet him as he waits for his fiancée, Molly (Crista Alfaiate). They have been engaged for seven years, and there has not been a glimpse of marriage until now when Molly has decided it is finally time to seal the details–traveling from London to Burma and marrying her one true love. The debonair Edward becomes a coward when he gets cold feet out of the blue. This is why Edward takes the first train to Singapore for an Asian Grand Tour.
Gomes never states why Edward panics with the first thought of marriage. The Portuguese filmmaker exemplifies his cowardliness in exploring the psyche of a 20th-century romance. Gomes wants to pinpoint early on his uncalled-for action of escaping reality to pave the way for his other themes, like culture, time, and space–all interlaced through the titular roundabout. In a matter of minutes, his world changes and leaves behind reason and indulges in worry. In some aspects, Edward represents the unsettled people who go their separate ways at the moment of significant change because they can’t commit. His journey through Asia takes Edward to Bangkok, Saigon, Japan, and the Philippines. He meets various locals that enrich his cultural and societal scope while concurrently shifting his paradoxical presumptions and contemplations.
Molly is right on his trail. In the second half of Grand Tour, she follows his steps to marry the love of her life. The tone between the two acts is quite different. Molly’s personality is more vibrant, which adds some comedic elements to the film, while Edward is a brooding character. This combination might seem odd at first, considering Gomes’ experimental approach, yet everything comes together as a fascinating daydream that blends the past with the present and reality with fiction. This tour has the two lovers running away and chasing each other from one country to another–cowardice and stubbornness colliding–with narrations, often heard in different languages, accompanying their travels, asserting the universality of storytelling.
Perspectives change how stories are told, and Gomes uses this narrative gadget to show how Edward and Molly’s tale is relatable yet isolated depending on the voice speaking on it. You get your first taste of the Marker influences here, as the background of Grand Tour comes within the experimentality of Sans Soleil. Gomes, known for blending narrative and documentary filmmaking in very creative ways, composes some scenes in a manner that Marker’s dreamy vision would. Gomes has said that in his films, “fiction is capable of fictionalizing the images themselves”, and you see how these beautiful monochrome images contain a reverie that puts the viewer in a trance.
Another element the Portuguese filmmaker uses to match Marker’s work is the addition of present-day footage (mostly shot in color) capturing the people and their respective situations in these countries. The narrations of Edward and Molly’s journeys intersect with fictionalized and documentary footage unrelated to the narrative. It hints at Gomes’s (and his group of screenwriters: Mariana Ricardo, Maureen Fazendeiro, and Telmo Churro) genuine interest and admiration for the film. They all want to meditate on memories and reflect on how our perception of remembrance has changed through the cinema forged by our dreams. It is not just memories about good or bad experiences you had, but history, place, sounds, and everything that traces back to one thing that traces back to another–creating a web of interlaced recollections held sacred by their owners to be shared with the world.
While Marker immortalized his footage of a moment that once was, preserving it via the power of celluloid and cinema, Gomes looks back at it with a new adventurous lens, crafting places and locations of the past with well-made sets–interspersed with modern-day footage–to reconfigure them into something new, stories with a new meaning and definition. By doing that, he is developing memories not only for himself and everyone involved in Grand Tour but also for us–the viewers who will look back on these piercing images and capture true, unique definitions of them. Of course, this applies to a great variety of films with potent images that are dreamy and grounded simultaneously. Yet, due to the magical nature of the direction in Grand Tour, it harnesses more power and inspires the mind.
I felt this same feeling in Alice Rohrwacher’s incredible La Chimera, where the beauty and imagination of cinema enchanted everything. Both stimulate your senses with their imagery; Gomes and Rorhrwacher share the brilliance of being such expressive artists in their own right, where every frame acts like a shot in the heart. Grand Tour and La Chimera–the two using memories as a gateway for realization and emotional healing–live in your mind, body, and soul as long as these frames and words continue to have meaning. (I still think about the “You are not meant for human eyes” line.) They are immortalized in your spirit like an irremovable tattoo, and if you seem to forget, these films are at arms’ length for you to revisit their enchanting power.