Level Five (1997)

LEVEL FIVE  (1997)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Chris Marker
    Catherine Belkhodja, Kenji Tokitsu, Kinjo Shigeaki
Chris Marker, who died in 2012 at 91, once made a movie ("La Jetée") from nothing but still images, so you know the guy didn't mind working outside the box. He's definitely doing that here, with a story that combines a video game with the Battle of Okinawa toward the end of World War Two. It's an ambitious but very uneven piece of work, part documentary, part psychedelic eyeshow, part philosophical speculation delivered straight into the camera in tight closeup by the actress Catherine Belkhodja. Belkhodja plays a character called Laura - at least that's one of her names - and she's the one playing the game, or maybe she's creating it, I'm not sure, trying (like Marker) to expand and defy the rules, to find out if, by controlling the outcome of the game, she can change history. The Okinawa footage is arresting enough to make you want to know more about the battle. (It was horrific.) The psychedelic stuff could make you wonder what the movie might look like if mind-altering substances were involved. (I watched it without them.) The closeup scenes with Belkhodja hold your attention for a while - Belkhodja is not hard to look at - but lost me completely about the time her character starts to engage in a two-way conversation with a stuffed parrot. It's the only time in the movie you see her smile, but she's pretty detached from the game at that point, and an awful long way from Okinawa.