La Jetée - Characters & Cast

His primary motivation is his obsessive memory of the woman's face. This image is what allows him to travel through time and becomes his reason for living. His ultimate goal shifts from survival or saving the present to simply returning to her, the source of the only peace and love he has ever known, regardless of the consequences.

The Man begins as a prisoner, physically and mentally trapped by the past. His arc is not one of change, but of realization. He is sent on a journey through his own timeline, finding a brief period of happiness and love, only to discover that his path has always been a closed loop leading to his own death. He moves from being a haunted individual to understanding he is the ghost in his own story, fulfilling a destiny he can't escape.

Her motivation appears to be simply to live in her present and to love the mysterious man who visits her. She acts as a receptive, gentle presence, providing the comfort and reality that the Man seeks in his journeys away from his grim existence.

The Woman does not have a traditional character arc; she exists more as a constant, an anchor in the past. She is the object of the Man's memory and desire. She seems to accept his mysterious appearances and disappearances without question, embodying a sense of timeless grace and acceptance. Her significance lies in what she represents to the Man: a peaceful, pre-war world and the possibility of love.

His motivation is purely scientific and pragmatic: to save the present by any means necessary. He seeks to exploit the Man's powerful memory to retrieve resources or technology from the past or future, showing little regard for the human cost of his experiments.

The lead scientist is an ambiguous figure. He is the one who enables the Man's journey, acting as a guide into the past. However, he is also a jailer, a representative of the cold, utilitarian post-war regime that uses the Man for its own purposes and discards him once he is no longer useful. His character does not develop but serves as the detached, clinical force that controls the protagonist's fate.