Time and memory have regularly been identified as two of the principal themes of Resnais's work, at least in his earlier films. He however consistently tried to modify this view of his concerns: "I prefer to speak of the imaginary, or of consciousness. What interests me in the mind is that faculty we have to imagine what is going to happen in our heads, or to remember what has happened". He also described his films as an attempt, however imperfect, to approach the complexity of thought and its mechanism.