Essay Questions

What can be interpreted from Davos' decision to go back in time rather than to the future?

Marker's film is one based on science fiction fantasy i.e., time travel in a post-World War III world. By creating this ability Marker's film explores the consequences of remaining "in the past" so to speak. Davos can go to the future and have help from his newly found comrades, but instead he remains fixated on an event from his childhood that he cannot figure out. So he chooses to go back to that moment, and by doing so he realizes this is the moment his childhood self witnessed the death of his adult self. So, Marker is telling us clearly that our need to hold on to our past in effecting our future and our ability to live out our lives in such a profound way that we are metaphorically dying before our own eyes.

Why is Davos sentenced to die?

Davos is a convicted criminal in a post-nuclear war France. Time travel has just been invented and he is able to withstand the physical and psychological demands necessary to travel into the future and the past. He is able to find people from the future to help them in the present, but when he returns to his present time he finds out that he is still sentenced to death even though he's successfully completed time travel in order to save the lives of the people of France. He is given an option, rather than being executed he can travel to the future or the past and remain there. He chooses the past, but soon sees that a hitman was sent back with him to take his life.

What's the importance of Davos' childhood memory?

Davos has had a connection to a moment in his childhood at The Jetty that he cannot shake. Someone was murdered and the memory haunts him. The reason this moment is significant is that Davos, as a child, witnesses his own murder. Time travel has been invented and Davos has traveled back to this moment but also followed by a hitman who takes his life. So, the moment is significant as it was the last moment of the young child's life that he experienced from a third person POV.