Sans Soleil: A Lesson in Témoignage
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Abstract
The act of bearing witness implies immediacy and chance, but also intimacy and responsibility. The witness observes but also participates in what he sees, in part by reporting back to those who are not present. In Chris Marker’s 1983 Sans Soleil his fictional stand-in, Sandor Krasna, reports back on the events and people he witnesses, both by letter to an unnamed female correspondent and by word and image to the film’s audience. Marker implies that the audience too may bear witness to the people and places visited by Krasna, no matter how foreign they initially seem. In particular, Marker encourages the audience to identify with whichever images – among the multitude presented in the film – resonate with their own experiences, moments of recognition which, as he quotes from a 11th century philosopher, “make the heart leap.” In spurring a more emotional connection, in the style of Proust’s involuntary memory, these moments of recognition allow for a deeper understanding of the other, and, in a postcolonial France, remind us that even the unknown may have associations with the self.
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