La Jetée and In the Mood for Love are each highly respected films in their own right, deserving of their timeless credibility and separate pieces about their greatness—but combined, an entirely new array of concepts arise. La Jetée, Chris Marker’s barely half-hour-long sci-fi time travel epic, depicts the story of a man in a dystopian futuristic France being thrown across the past and future to save humanity from its expected doom. In the Mood for Love, meanwhile, is one of director Wong Kar-wai’s masterpieces; featuring a slow-moving love story of missed opportunities and shame in 1960s Hong Kong, Mood is one of the few high-quality films that entertains and invokes emotion as much as it provokes thought on a variety of abstract subjects—a globally rare feat (not for Wong Kar-wai though).

Separately, these films each harbor a lot of weight and social commentary for viewers to feel squeezed under. Jetée questions the value of primarily Western social structures (and warns of their impending, globe-ending dangers), and the other mirrors the rapid changes in the geopolitical atmosphere of Hong Kong experienced past the 1960s through an in-’60s, nostalgic and heartbreaking love story. However, together, they question one component central to life: memory. La Jetée details a lot about the linearity of life and the value of memories by using them as time travel’s crux; In the Mood for Love, meanwhile, utilizes them as tragic time capsules people may want to toss, have run together with other memories, or conversely unseal despite the pain they can bring. Memory is depicted as both a gift and a curse across these cinematic classics, as it can bring joy and nostalgia as much as it can strike the killing blow when least expected, shaping everything we experience in the present as that present becomes past.

Memory is the core component of La Jetée‘s time travel functionality. The narrator (Jean Négroni) explains over a series of photos of Paris, the world, a woman (Hélène Châtelain), and more that “Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. Later on they do claim remembrance when they show their scars.” As the woman’s face appears, the narrator details how the film’s unnamed male subject (Davos Hanich) obsesses over that woman and her accompanying “peacetime” imagery, as World War III led to the destruction of the world as known then and now. Those memories would not matter without their stark difference to the subject’s present reality. If Paris stood and global communication and trade still prospered, these memories of his pre-World War III life would not matter because they would be ordinary; there would be nothing positive or traumatic to “claim remembrance” of. But in this world, the memory of such a different peaceful reality is not so easy to shake; it becomes a source of brief hope and joy, and, however grimly it must be used, a basis for action and the unknowing defining moment of the subject’s life in a sickly cyclical manner.

For In the Mood for Love, memory is something that almost needs ridding of. After a soul-shattering narrative of love nearly forming from unfortunate affairs—atmospherically charged by Wong’s nostalgic gaze at a slower-moving Hong Kong of the ’60s in a time when Hong Kong was evolving very fast, both geopolitically and socially—title cards depict a generalized epilogue for Mr. Chow (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung): “That era has passed. Nothing that belonged to it exists anymore…. He [Mr. Chow] remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.” With the pair’s lives changing rapidly only three years after meeting—the invisible reflection of Hong Kong’s sociocultural evolution—their memories become distant beacons of what almost was. Even as the pair each return to their old shared apartment building, they miss each other, destined for new journeys. No amount of tears from Mrs. Chan or whispered secrets from Mr. Chow will alleviate the pain that these memories harbor.

Thus, La Jetée and In the Mood for Love complement one another, demonstrating why memory is vital to the human condition. While memory can be painful, it defines choices at the moment and thus influences our futures. Chan and Chow may live worse off without each other, but the memory also reminds them of what life still can be; for La Jetée‘s main time slipper, memory is both the fuel of his and humanity’s future and the indicator of his end. Trauma can intensify or eradicate a memory’s presence entirely, making what people can and cannot remember a determining factor in their perceptions and behaviors. Together, these films make a hell of an argument for wanting to remember every detail of one’s existence. They are also each fiercely compelling on their own—one is about love, loneliness, and missed chances, and the other is about time catching up to everyone and memories being one’s incessant reminder of time’s existence—making it a treat for fine cinema fans, sci-fi fans, romance fans, and fans of either of the films’ respective creators.

Screens Saturday, 4/5, 2:00 p.m. @ Harvard Film Archive
Double Feature w/ Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962)
Part of the ongoing repertory series: Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque