Terry Gilliam’s film, “12 Monkeys” (1995) was inspired by, and takes several concepts directly from the pretty obscure French film “La jetée” made in 1962 by Chris Marker and known in English as “The Jetty” or “The Pier.” The film, by the way: black and white, runs for 28 minutes and the plot is quite simple, the main character – appears as “The Man” – is a prisoner in the aftermath of the Third World War, in a destroyed, post-apocalyptic Paris where survivors live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. Scientists research time travel, hoping to send test subjects to different time periods “to call past and future to the rescue of the present”. They have difficulty finding subjects who can mentally withstand the shock of time travel, but eventually settle upon the prisoner, whose key to the past is a vague but obsessive childhood memory of a woman (who features obviously as “The Woman”) during an incident where a man was killed on the boarding platform (the jetty) at Orly Airport. After several attempts, he reaches the pre-war period. He meets the woman from his memory, and they develop a romantic relationship. After his successful passages to the past, the experimenters attempt to send him into the far future. In a brief meeting with the technologically advanced people of the future, he is given a power unit sufficient to regenerate his own destroyed society.Upon his return, with his mission accomplished, he discerns that he is to be executed by his jailers. He is contacted by the people of the future, who offer to help him escape to their time permanently, but he asks instead to be returned to the pre-war time of his childhood, hoping to find the woman again. He is returned and does find her, on the jetty at the airport – however, an agent of his jailers has followed, and assassinates him. In his final moments, he realises that the death which he witnessed as a child, which has haunted him for his entire life, was none other than his own.
Actually I didn’t saw the movie, I’m far not that smart-ass as I seem to be ( 😀 ), so I dig out this from the Wikipedia. The original music was scored by Trevor Duncan. So, “The Pier” is an alternate soundtrack for this film, you can downloaded even for free from the band’s Bandcamp page (“name your price” actually can be zero…), but just as the guys said: “The Pier is and always will be a free download, but please donate something to us if you like it so we can continue to do what we love”, so…
They also says: “To watch simultaneously, start the album at 00:32 seconds into the film. However, one doesn’t need to view the film with this album to appreciate it. We actually recommend that you listen to it by itself the first time.”
The album was released on 29 June 2011. All guitar parts written and recorded from February 10th-17th by John Guest in his home studio. Mason Macias wrote and recorded the drum parts some time in May, later to be rerecorded in June at UTSA’s downtown studio. Aaron Goekler wrote and recorded the bass parts for “Part II”, “Part III” and “Part VI”. Sergio Lozano wrote, arranged and performed all the viola parts in March 2011. All samples come from La Jetee (1962). The album was engineered by Mason Macias in San Antonio, TX in late June 2011.
This is well, a quite cinematic, acoustic post-rock trip, a soundtrack just as it meant to be. Smooth, sometimes gloomy, but nice. The guys said they had an amazing time making this record and as they hoped, it’s quite enjoyable listening.
I find it more interesting their other other release, “Her Eyes a Mirror”, more darker, but quite sparking, featuring Nikki Bourg. Check it out!
I didn’t managed to dig out anything else about Amnesis. I stumbled into a band called Amnesis on Facebook, but it seems to be another one. Nowadays I’m not sure of anything anymore…
