We are there, yet cut off…

Marker is far less impressed by the camera’s neutrality or its ability to record things whole. He loves imagery, but does not trust it. His essential influences – Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov – are filmmakers who explored montage (or editing) as a stimulus to argument. Pictures come to life if we are looking, thinking, testing; they demand definition, not just awed witness.

Above all, Mr. Marker sees that imagery has become a chief resort of our collective memory – but in a way that stresses our isolation as much as our involvement. To adapt the critic John Berger (another Markerian) a little: photographs evoke presence and absence at the same time. We are there, in the scene, yet cut off from it. It is the model for so much of modern experience – our amazing ability to acquire information usually depends on some distancing mechanism. We do not know things so much as pretend to know them.

- David Thomson, “Chris Marker: Already Living in Film’s Future,” nytimes.com, 2003