Time as The Subject in Chris Marker's Sans Soleil

Chris Marker claims in Sans Soleil (1983) that the great question of 20th century has been the “co-existence of different concepts of time” after the mankind had come to terms with space in the 19th century. Marker’s assertion undoubtedly derives from the distinct sociopolitical environments in 19th and 20th centuries: since the 19th century is primarily marked by colonization, hence emphasizing the issue of space, in the postcolonial 20th century the fundamental issue of humanity shifted from spatial to temporal. Consequently, space as mode of exposition has arguably been exhausted and the postmodern 20th century therefore seeks to utilize time as its mode of exposition. One cannot argue against the fact that temporality and spatiality are two sides of the same coin. Then, the inquiry of time indisputably pursues an inquiry of space simultaneously. In Marker’s revolutionary experimental non-fiction film, Marker likewise juxtaposes different spaces such as Tokyo, Iceland, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, San Francisco, and Paris although a hierarchy between them can be assumed based on their screen time. Quantitively, footage from Tokyo exceeds other locations; and it can be speculated that Tokyo’s screen time precedes other locations due to its qualitative features in relation to time. Marker potentially deems Tokyo not merely as a space, but further as a temporal bridge between past, present, and future. This implication can be derived from the beginning of cyberculture in the 1980s in Tokyo: since cyberculture allows transcendence of space, an extension of postcolonial period in uniting people from all over the world, the significance of the exposition of space further decreases. Ergo, the interest in exposition of time accelerates as exemplified through the film’s subject matter: memory and time. In his declarations regarding memory, Marker emphasizes time as a distinct subject. Temporality, now distinguished and established as a subject, then allows the coexistence of different concepts of time. Aligned with the fractured approach to the postmodern subject, time as subject is likewise characterized by its mutability; thereby allowing different concepts and approaches. During the narrator’s recital of his construction of an imaginary science fiction film, there is observable shift in the stream of consciousness: first an astronaut is envisioned as if he is from another planet, then he is reimagined as a time traveler visiting from the future. Hence, his odyssey is no longer a spatial one, but it is rather temporal: this shift conceivably echoes the previously discussed repositioning of space replacing time in 20th century. Moreover, the fluctuating nature of the narrative and the non-fixed non-linear flow of the narration through stream of consciousness technique, an inherently modernist literary device, reassure time as subject functions as the mirror image of the postmodern subject: unfixed, mutable, a floating signifier. Although time is the mode of 20th century and operates as a subject, time also reveals insights into different cultures, arguably through its position as a subject. As discussed previously, in his film Marker presents juxtaposed real-life footage from a variety of cultures. In these footages, there appears film subjects who look back at the camera. When the narration vocalizes “Frankly, have you ever heard of anything stupider than to say to people as they teach in film schools, not to look at the camera?”, Marker arguably knows why this has been indoctrinated. The reason is simple: when the film subject looks back at the camera, the invisible layer between the spectator and the spectacle is blurred, and it has long been argued that this disrupts the pleasure of being a voyeur. It can then be argued that the film subject assumes the position of an object as the spectacle whereas the viewer is the subject who is the spectator. The pleasure derived from voyeurism is the assumption that the gaze belongs only to voyeur. The moment the film subject looks at the camera, this weaponized gaze is reversed, and the spectated film subject arguably transforms from the object to the subject. Due to the inherent nature of film, this occurrence is achieved through the temporality: the footage, after all, always belongs to the past. It can therefore be concluded that time in this scenario acts as the mediator, a subject, who unites the viewer with their time subject, working as a deconstructive force demolishing the barrier between them.