Science Fiction: A Ghetto

Science Fiction: A Ghetto

Science fiction as a genre gets little respect.

“What?” goes the cries. “With the Star Wars series, the Transformer series, the Jurassic Park series, and the Marvel Comics Universe raking in billions?”

Je t'aime, je t'aime (Alain Resnais, 1968)

(Belatedly for Bastille Day: one of the finest French science-fiction films ever made)

 Somewhere in time

Arguably the least seen of his works, Alain Resnais' Je t'aime, je t'aime is also, arguably, his only science fiction feature (though the label could be applied to almost almost every one of his films flirting with the idea of time travel, memory implants, alternate universes).

It's also one of his most underrated. The basic premise has one Claude Ridder (Claude Rich) being talked out of the hospital (where he has just been treated for a failed suicide attempt) and into a car, taken to a laboratory (the Crespel Research Center), injected with a drug called T.5, shut in a time machine that viewers have noted as looking 'organic,' resembling a 'disembodied heart,' or 'large womb' or 'giant brain' (I'd throw in 'humungous fungus' and 'stupendous squash' myself, maybe even 'mutant pig uterus perforated by plastic skewers in preparation for roasting').

Night and Fog (1955) - in tribute to Alain Resnais (1922 - 2014)

In tribute to Alain Resnais, 1922 -2014

I remember handing a work of literature about the Holocaust (Art Spiegelman's Maus) to my class, and after they had finished the book and passed the exams, having them watch Resnais' Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog, 1955). By then my students were wary (they knew me too well) and full of questions: will it be long? Will it be in black and white? Will it be boring? I replied: "No; kind of; see for yourself."