The importance of being Pattern

(mmm... that's a cheap title)

Is pattern, and its repetition, a behavioral/organizational mode?
Following Steven Johnson's Emergence, yes. He dwells into the idea of self-organizing systems and finds the fundamental role played by patterns, and the distance they keep from any kind of masterplan or pacemaker. A basic series of rules and operations create a pattern that repeats indefinitely and could make a defined system regulate itself. As the patterns interact, even slightly, difference emerge, and development/shrinking occurs.


Then, is Marienbad (or Karlstadt, or Fredericksbad) a self-organizing community?
Trying to apply the above considerations to the movie Last year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961), we realize, at first, that most of them seem out of context, mainly because the fundamental condition of self-organization is a minimum or absence of plan.
Therefore the movie, technically speaking, cannot guarantee this, since Alain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais carefully prepared every shot, cut and voice.
But still, the "impression" is that of such an "autonomous" system.

"There were notices everywhere: Quiet", says the narrator re-telling and re-creating the labyrinth of the hotel corridors where the two main characters probably met; such warning tells us about a place that need only behaviors. Voices here are not needed anymore, and all the other human beings we see in the movie are silent, still, even if they talk. What they say is immediately non-relevant.

But, we wander in this labyrinth through the unfolding of the main character's memories. Why?
Probably the quest of our character, following minor glimpses, changes, and glitches in his repetition, is far more effective than just the accurate description (which we found, rhythmically) of a place and the behavior of its inhabitants.
The repetitive structure of the place and memory, the doubtful experience of deja-vu, construct a powerful and dense space made of hallway shots from different places, but linked and explored as a whole. The gestures, contacts, and movements of the two (three) characters are linked and made fluid through montage, revealing the differences while maintaining similar movements of men.
Movements, those, that are just all occurring in front of us. Nothing has been hidden, in terms of what we need to know about the plot. And knowing if everything happened last year, a month, a day, or a second ago, does not make any difference.

As Robbe-Grillet said, the time of Marienbad is there, the time of the story coincides with that of the viewer, 1 hour and a half. And even if another time is evoked or suggested (or desired), we find answers or motivations that keep the events in the present.
We don't need to unravel the mystery, to find when they actually met, or if they ever did.
The elements are there, as they are in the Nim game the two male characters often play in the movie. The objects are on the table, but even getting through the game itself means to lose, move, switch and miss some of the pieces.

Marienbad is an effective self-contained moment, and questions are ultimately not needed, for the viewing experience.
Perception and repetition create a coherent space, memory is constantly put into question, and ways of seeing the space, too. Crucial questions for us as makers.
Robbe-Grillet and Resnais render this questions statements, and Giorgio Albertazzi's journey through memory becomes ours.

P.S. what happens when space has different values, other than the obsessive and claustrophobic ones? Here's two examples, that very quickly came into my mind. One. And, two.