Endless Time in La Jetee

One aspect that intrigued me in La Jetée was the loop that the main character creates when he goes back in time all the way to his childhood at the end of the movie. It not only ties the movie back to itself, but it also results in an endless loop of his viewing of his own death as a child and his dying in front of his childhood self as an adult. This cycle of never-ending time is almost like a way to immortality, though it is violent and impossible to break out of -- he is doomed to forever repeat trauma and death. The fact that his childhood trauma gives him the ability to travel in time as an adult further emphasizes this inescapable loop. This loop is very much similar to the concept of the ourobouros - a snake eating its own tail, representing a vicious cycle or things beginning as they end.

The other, almost painfully obvious significant point in the movie was the moving shot of the woman when she wakes up in the bed. This is used as a formal device to emphasize the scene; the scene first moves slowly, then the rate of the photographs becomes faster and faster as she finally wakes up and blinks at the camera. The scene itself could have been used to emphasize the idea of waking up from the endless loops we create for ourselves each day and actually changing something, instead of repeating the same negative habits over and over as if we were machines needing new input from an operator.

There is simply too much that can be written about this movie, and I certainly haven't fully explained these two points, but La Jetée definitely gives us something to think about.