i remeber once seeing a synopsisfor the SCIENCE OF SLEEP on imdb -- its been removed -- does any one have any other rescources that breaks the plot of this film down -- if so -- post it and i wll be happy. thank you in advance for any one who decides to do a good deed.
I read it, it's pretty entertaining but there's so much of it that's in dream sequence, by the end I think it loses a bit of its power. It kind of just wears off a bit. The damn's script is in 3 different colors.
Bernal Signs Up for 'Science' ClassGael Garcia Bernal, who is generating buzz for his role as Ernesto "Che" Guevara in "The Motorcycle Diaries," is revving up for the new project from the director of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
Bernal will star in Michel Gondry's "The Science of Sleep" alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg and Alain Chabat. The logline is being kept under wraps because of revisions currently underway in Gondry's script, but it is known to switch back and forth from dreamlike sequences to reality. [MacGuffin's Note: See below]
The Focus Features project is scheduled to start shooting by year's end in France.
Bernal also stars in Pedro Almodovar's "Bad Education," from Sony Pictures Classics.
Quote from: In the Eternal Sunshine thread, MacGuffinYour next film, The Science of Sleep, is about man held hostage in a dream.
Yes, the main character develops a technique to control his dreams. He's in love with a girl, and he tries to use the dream to be with her in a way. But even in the dream, it doesn't work. He gets so involved in his dream that he gets stuck between the dream and real life. And the people in the dream don't want him to wake up, because they're afraid he won't come back to the dream and they won't exist anymore.
Again, this sounds very personal.
It's very personal, and I wrote the screenplay.
Gondry and his obsession with dreams. geesh. I don't know what I'm going to do with him.
Thanks for those pictures of Julianne. 8)
First image from The Science Of Sleep (courtesy AICN):
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fgaelonline.com%2Fgallery%2Falbums%2Fuserpics%2F10001%2Fscience01.jpg&hash=81ed6d5ed1c9dae64f9eb7d662bab5af5fd1ea3a)
Quote from: GhostboyFirst image from The Science Of Sleep (courtesy AICN):
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fgaelonline.com%2Fgallery%2Falbums%2Fuserpics%2F10001%2Fscience01.jpg&hash=81ed6d5ed1c9dae64f9eb7d662bab5af5fd1ea3a)
it's also the last image. :yabbse-sad:
That's so weird... my dreams all involve staring at Gael Garcia Bernal through peepholes. And all along I thought that was unusual.
Another Surreal Film Coming From 'Eternal Sunshine' Director Michel Gondry
Source: MTV
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mtv.com%2Fshared%2Fmedia%2Fnews%2Fimages%2Fg%2FGondry_Michel%2Fsq_gondrypose_tiff_getty.jpg&hash=51fa8d781c6bce06883a4300e2bfc26c69fd5b81)
While Michel Gondry has created fantastical worlds onscreen — his arresting visual images have elevated him to auteur status in the realm of music videos (Björk, White Stripes) and independent films ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") — the idiosyncratic filmmaker has also achieved the improbable in the real world.
What other film director can say he's compelled Jim Carrey to drop the buffoon routine and actually act; played drums on a Kanye West song ("Diamonds From Sierra Leone"); and displeased Radiohead so much — with his abstract clip for "Knives Out" — that they denied him permission to use the video in his "Directors Label" compilation DVD?
Predictably enough, Gondry's affinity for reality-bending is also evident in his third feature-length film, "The Science of Sleep."
The director, who is currently putting the finishing touches on the picture, said the story centers on a daydreamer who retreats into his visions and begins to confuse them with reality. "It's about dreams and rejections," Gondry said in his thick (and often impenetrable) French accent. "[The protagonist] has a very vivid dream life and his real life is more of a disappointment. He meets his neighbor, who he starts to fall in love with ..." he paused, as though feeling he was about to reveal too much. "Most of the film is in reality, but parts play out in his dreams."
Gondry's previous features, "Sunshine" and 2001's "Human Nature," both utilized the absurdist gifts of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, but "Sleep" was based on an idea from a friend and was written entirely by Gondry. "I participated in [the premise of 'Eternal Sunshine'], but writing is scary on your own," he said.
Due in March, "The Science of Sleep" stars Gael García Bernal ("The Motorcycle Diaries," "Y Tu Mamá También") as the over-imaginative dreamer and Charlotte Gainsbourg — daughter of late French pop star Serge Gainsbourg and British singer Jane Birkin — plays his love interest. Gondry has said in the past that the film is a loose interpretation of the "Everlong" video he shot for the Foo Fighters in 1997, where a man saves his girlfriend from hellions in a dream world. An English-language film with a mostly French cast, the story is set in Paris in an apartment building Gondry used to live in (the film also stars French actress Emma de Caunes, who, incidentally, appeared in the contentious "Knives Out" video).
Asked about the film's tenor, Gondry acknowledged it will have comedic elements but he said he's averse to labeling his films. "All my movies have elements of comedy, but it's hard to define," he said. "When we did 'Eternal Sunshine,' we weren't aiming for any particular [tone]; we were just trying to tell the story the best way possible. Obviously, when it goes to video, people have to decide whether it goes into the comedy or drama section, but other than that, you don't have an obligation to fit it into a category."
Music is always a vital element in Gondry's films (the "Sunshine" soundtrack features Beck, the Polyphonic Spree and a score by Fiona Apple producer Jon Brion), and the director has tapped his longtime pals in the White Stripes and California garage rockers the Willowz to lend the movie some pop. "We'll do a video for the [White Stripes 'Instinct Blues,' which appears in the film], it's such a great track," Gondry said, noting that he'd like to make as many videos with the Stripes as he has with Björk ("Instinct Blues" would make five; he's made six with Björk. See "White Stripes Teaming With Lego-Lovin' Michel Gondry Again"). Gondry also recently helmed Kanye West's clip for "Heard 'Em Say" (see "Kanye, Kids Run Amok In Surreal Macy's For New Clip").
Another music project, "Block Party" — his concert film of the 2004 event hosted by comedian Dave Chappelle that featured performances from the reunited Fugees, Kanye West, Common and the Roots — is also scheduled to hit theaters next year (see "Fugees — Yes, Even Lauryn — Reunite For Dave Chappelle's Block Party"). While the DVD is still many months off, Gondry says that eight hours of footage was shot, so the expanded disc is likely to contain a bounty of extras and bonus materials.
And although they're in very early stages, Gondry said he has two more film projects on tap, both of which are in his favored realm of quasi-science-fiction. The first, "Master of Space and Time," is a comedic time travel film with Jack Black attached as a quixotic scientist ("He gets up to no good," Gondry said) (see "Jack Black Goes After 'Space And Time' — And The President"). The other is a yet-untitled French-language film that also includes a time-travel premise, albeit one that's more autobiographical in nature.
"It's about my friend in my old band [Oui Oui] in the early '80s. It's set in 2005 and we meet our [1980s] selves in the present and interact," he said, laughing. "It's a completely stupid story!"
this sounds very interesting, as does anything Gondry's involved in.
have Radiohead ever talked much about why they hate Knives Out so much?
i effing love that video. luckily i taped it off MTV when they used to play MTV2 stuff in 30 min. spans.
(and the actress is very cute if i remember correctly)
The only thing I can think of is in the book
Radiohead: Back to Save the Universe, it's mentioned:
QuoteApart from anything else the song nearly managed to consume the band itself, taking no less than 373 days and 313 hours to complete. As Thom, not surprisingly, told Mojo: "For the longest time, I really, really hated that song."
yeah, what do they want? its a crappy song. plus, its not like the video could've come as a surprise to them. they had to have approved the director & the concept, showed up at the shoot and had a pretty good idea of what it was going to be like. its not like they can claim to have been completely obvlivious to what was going on.
Quote from: modage on November 11, 2005, 11:22:28 PM
yeah, what do they want? its a crappy song. plus, its not like the video could've come as a surprise to them. they had to have approved the director & the concept, showed up at the shoot and had a pretty good idea of what it was going to be like. its not like they can claim to have been completely obvlivious to what was going on.
I think Thom is pissed Gondry duped him into smiling for the video.
Sundance synopsis:
QuoteTHE SCIENCE OF SLEEP
France, 2005, 105 Minutes, color
Director:
Michel Gondry
Screenwriter:
Michel Gondry
Life seems to be looking up for shy and withdrawn Stephane when he returns to his childhood home with the promise of a great job. Wildly creative, his fanciful and sometimes disturbing dream life constantly threatens to usurp his waking world. While the job fails to meet expectations, he does strike up a relationship with his neighbor, Stephanie. As their connection blossoms, the confidence he exudes in his fanciful dream life begins bleeding into his real life. But just as everything is looking up, his insecurities raise their ugly head, and he faces a dilemma that the science of sleep may not help him solve. Michel Gondry's science fiction doesn't explore outer, but rather inner, space, playfully reflecting the interaction between the worlds we inhabit: nature, society, and the mind. The Science of Sleep utilizes rudimentary techniques to craft a thoroughly complex vision of the lead character's brain, filled with the anxieties, hopes, fears, and yearnings that lie in all of us. Gael Garcia Bernal perfectly radiates these emotions as Stephane, a man trying to take control of his dreams because his life is slipping away. Densely packed with imagery and symbols as well as soulful emotion and humor, The Science of Sleep weaves a dreamlike narrative ripe for examination and enjoyment and further establishes Gondry as a master of cinematic language.— Trevor Groth
http://festival.sundance.org
a few behind the scenes pictures are up: http://www.twitchfilm.net/archives/004838.html
And the bidding begins!
QuoteThe second – and perhaps last – bidding war at Sundance 2005 has begun over Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep.
(There will be other bidding situations, but skirmishes, not wars.)
It actually started before the film screened, as Paramount Classics' (or whatever it will be called) John Lesher started the conversation about embracing Gondry not only for this film and beyond. Fox Searchlight and Focus Features also initiated conversations before the movie was over.
The lobby of the Eccles had that "war room" feel following the movie, though everyone but Warner Indie's Mark Gill had exited, awaiting cell conversations leading to all night negotiations, before the Q&A had ended.
In one corner, Warner Indie... near by, 13 members of the Paramount team huddled... Bob Berney's Picturehouse crew huddled behind a chalkboard, out of the eyeline of the others, the new First Look team hung out talking numbers with owner Henry Eschelman, various Searchlighters, Focused folks and other assorted players played around the rest of the Eccles lobby.
How will it come out? Earlier in the day, word around town was that John Lesher was interested in the film in great part because he wanted to develop the relationship with Gondry, reflecting his former life as an agent. But the movie is more than a relationship. There is, in my opinion, between $7 million and $10 million to be made on domestic theatrical with the right marketing. But this is also one of the problems with anyone who makes a deal with Lesher here at Sundance. With no head of marketing currently in place and the coming head of publicity stuck in her current job for another four months, who going to sell the movie.
The buzz around is that ParClassics dropped out of the bidding on Little Miss Sunshine specifically because big Paramount marketing chief Gerry Rich didn't see a way to sell the movie to make the numbers necessary to make it work. And he really shouldn't have to. He is a big studio guy and films here at Sundance need indie minded marketing, as Paramount learned last year with Hustle & Flow, whose marketing was taken over by the big studio and which struggled to get to break even.
How serious is Searchlight? RiceUtleyGilula didn't stick around to watch the film, but left Josh Deighton to be their eyes.
Focus seems to be the most natural fit, with a successful history of dealing with foreign language product and a pipeline need.
The film will probably be priced out of range for Picturehouse and certainly First Look. And while Warner Indie made great hay changing March of the Penguins dramatically and getting well deserved awards for Paradise Now, it's not clear that they are ramped up for a wild ride movie from a director who is not going to adjust to them.
There will likely be an answer by morning. How far will the players go in bidding? Not as far as Little Miss Sunshine, but it is likely to be more than $4 million and it is likely to be the last film at this year's festival to fetch that kind of price.
http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/
Pretty cool for a film that features three languages.
lesher is determined to land all the hot directors and make paramount the new focus.
Warner Independent got it
QuoteWarner Independent Gets Gondry For $6 Million
Warner Independent Pictures has announced its acquisition of Michel Gondry's latest film, "The Science of Sleep," which debuted last night here at the Sundance Film Festival. U.S., Canadian, and U.K. rights to the movie, starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg, were acquired for $6 million, according to Warner Independent. [Eugene Hernandez]
http://www.indiewire.com/buzz/060122.html#002203
warner independant is the new paramount classics. now they had better not make me wait a fucking year to see the thing.
Quote from: modage on January 23, 2006, 05:53:35 PM
warner independant is the new paramount classics. now they had better not make me wait a fucking year to see the thing.
Warner Indepedent Pres Mark Gill said he is eyeing for a summer or fall release.
QuoteThe Science of Sleep is a movie that demands to be seen more than once, but it's something of a miracle that a movie this complex and this beautiful—not to mention, damn funny—can resonate so strongly on first viewing. It invites comparisons to Gilliam's Brazil as well as the aforementioned Eternal Sunshine, but that's to be taken as the highest compliment rather than critic's shorthand. No single review can do this movie justice, just like no single dream can sum up your whole life. It can take more time than you have to sift through it. The more you think about it, the deeper it goes.
http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=13581
:shock:
wow..i'm stoked
I hate the word stoked, but me too
how bout instead of stoked i'd say I'm...
aflame, aroused, awakened, beside oneself, charged, delighted, eager, enthusiastic, feverish, fired up, frantic, high, hopped up, horny, hot, hyper, hysterical, inflamed, inspired, juiced up, jumpy, keyed up, moved, on fire, overwrought, passionate, piqued, roused, ruffled, steamed up, stimulated, stirred, thrilled, tumultuous, worked up?
i'm relieved. though i was looking forward to it bigtime i was worried about post-eternalsunshine nothing-can-live-up-to-that-film-in-my-mind-ness and it might've been a big letdown. but things are looking up.
Review:
http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=features2006&content=jump&jump=review&head=sundance&nav=RSundance&articleid=VE1117929332
QuoteTechnically, the film is immaculate in an intimate, precious way. Extensive animation done at Gondry's studio provides a crucial element of the film's appeal, to which Jean-Louis Bompont's ultra-nimble lensing, Juliette Welfling's fleet editing and Jean-Michel Bernard's score add dimension
.
QuoteAt pic's best, Gondry generates a sense of youthful camaraderie based on spontaneously prankish creativity that recalls the Godard of "Band of Outsiders"; there's a freewheeling exhilaration to some of the scenes augmented by the (admittedly little-used) Parisian setting and a sense of no limits.
http://www.timeout.com/film/news/872.html
QuoteGondry is a storyteller with a language that is very much his own; a language characterised by his background in music videos and a very personal, uncynical and honest approach to love and romance.
QuoteConfusing? Yes, and brilliantly so. Gondry infuses the same sense of ensemble chaos that he achieved in 'Eternal Sunshine' with romance, imagination and comedy. His inventiveness is intoxicating, bewildering and inspiring.
these articles haven't been posted yet right?
Quote from: modage on January 24, 2006, 07:23:11 PM
i'm relieved. though i was looking forward to it bigtime i was worried about post-eternalsunshine nothing-can-live-up-to-that-film-in-my-mind-ness and it might've been a big letdown. but things are looking up.
you must never have seen any of gondry's previous work in music videos. u know how david lynch is always talking about ideas coming out of some ocean like fish and you just have to wait for them to pop up? well two-thirds of gondry's body mass is that ocean.. when it gets hot, he secretes it from his pores.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.timeinc.net%2Few%2Fcovergallery%2Fimg%2F2006%2Ffeb32006_861_lg.jpg&hash=1d54bd9ca1d38f81790018c0fd45102597d893e4)
guess you didn't hear current EW/RollingStone coverboy Kanye West's thoughts on that...
''What did you think of the 'Heard 'Em Say' videos?'' Kanye asks. Tell him that Michel Gondry's original version, in which the rapper and a couple of cutie-pie kids frolic in Macy's, was an oversentimental disappointment and he nods his head. ''For real? You thought it was bad? Yeah, that's what I thought too.''
Quote from: modage on January 31, 2006, 09:44:54 PM
guess you didn't hear current EW/RollingStone coverboy Kanye West's thoughts on that...
guess you didn't hear my thoughts on it either, we all know it sucked..
http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=6006.msg212058#msg212058
New stills from Science of Sleep (http://www.cinempire.com/multimedia/science-of-sleep/stills.html)
French director Gondry returns to subconscious
French director Michel Gondry, who won an Oscar for co-writing "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," has returned to the theme of the subconscious with his latest film.
In "The Science of Sleep," which was screened at the Berlin Film Festival on Saturday, "Motorcycle Diaries" star Gael Garcia Bernal plays a shy misfit called Stephane.
The character moves from Mexico to Paris after his father's death and takes up employment as a graphic designer, but quickly loses interest in a job that involves little more than sticking labels on advertising calendars in a basement.
His only bright spot is neighbor Stephanie, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, who joins him in childish games that blur the boundaries between dream and reality.
"I always had disturbing dreams from when I was a child," Gondry told reporters after a press viewing. "Seeing that they disturb me, I might as well make money from it."
Asked whether he saw similarities between himself and the lead character, he replied: "It's very very close."
He added that he spent a year talking to Bernal about the part before making the film.
"What is important for me is to meet an actor and to find a common ground where we are both comfortable."
While many of the visions in the film were from his own dreams, Gondry also drew on the garish visual world of Eastern European children's program from the 1960s and 1970s.
"It is not pretentious. It just gives you the feeling you could do it yourself," said Gondry, who worked on the script for eight years.
The film drew warm applause from Berlin's famously fussy press audience.
Featuring a time machine, recurring dreams, a mix of animation and real footage and actors speaking to each other in English to French and Spanish, The Science of Sleep thrives on keeping the audience guessing.
For Bernal, it was the journey between Stephane's inner and outer world that challenged him most.
"This film was an exercise on how to handle the demons I meet in my sleep, and Michel put even more wood on that fire," said Bernal.
"Films are often about reality and nothing but reality. But reality can be an inhibition that can be really bothering."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
French director ponders weird dreams in 'The Science of Sleep'
Oscar-winning French director Michel Gondry's latest film about the troubles of the heart and mind, "The Science of Sleep," had its first European screening at the Berlinale festival.
Gondry cast Mexican heart throb Gael Garcia Bernal, of the "Motorcycle Diaries" and Pedro Almodovar's "The Bad Education," as a Latin American named Stephane who soars in his wild dreams but fumbles in real life.
He arrives in Paris after his father's death, takes up a dull job and finds his soulmate in his equally dreamy, artsy-craftsy neighbour, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg.
But he is too shy and childish to seduce her, and loses her even as he loses control over his dreams, which start interfering with his life.
Or does he really? The dreams -- shot in rough animation style -- and their strange power intercede with reality until the viewer shares the bewilderment of Bernal's character.
The film suggests that the two sweethearts can always find each other in their sleep again.
Said Bernal after the screening: "I think people can relate to each in their dreams but in everyday life it is very hard."
Gondry said he drew inspiration from his own troubled sleep and, at Bernal's persuasion, allowed the dreams sequences in "The Science of Sleep" to become more and more autobiographic towards the end.
"I have always had disturbing dreams from when I was a kid and I thought if I am disturbed by them I might as well earn a living with it," he joked to reporters.
"The main character was very, very close to myself," he added, and hinted that he suffered that character's sentimental rejection in real life.
His understanding of dreams owe little to Sigmund Freud, he said, and much more to his reading of neurobiology, adding that he believed most artists "do what they do to make up for some form of imbalance."
Gondry made music videos for Beck and the Chemical Brothers before winning an Oscar for best script in 2005 with his second film, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," about lovers who wipe out their memories to forget each other only to then realize what they had lost.
"The Science of Sleep" is a home-coming for Gondry not only because of his return to French cinema, he said, but also because he shot the film in the apartment building in Paris where he lived 15 years ago.
"In the beginning I did not feel very accepted in the French industry but now it is getting better," he said.
"But the French cinema community is finding it hard to get away from the Nouvelle Vague and that was 40 years ago. I do not feel compelled to represent France."
The characters in "The Science of Sleep" switch between English and French as they do between waking and dreaming, with Gainsbourg not only looking but sounding like her sweet-voiced mother Jane Birkin.
The film premiered at the Sundance Festival in the United States in January and will open in France in October.
It is showing out of competition at the Berlinale, which runs until February 19.
Crazy exciting clip available for viewing by subscribing to partizan podcast~!
http://www.partizan.com/partizan/podcast/
FUCK yes.
EDIT: Just found this on IMDB:
QuoteComingsoon.net has posted the US release date--August 4, 2006. Huzzah!
way too long to wait.
good clip, it didn't spoil a thing and got me interested in the movie.twas basically a teaser. and i'm glad gael got rid of his crap british accent.
what? meh.
I'm interested in any movies involving Gondry. that clip was.....well, different. I'm looking forward to a trailer or poster. 8)
it's getting mixed reactions from the people that saw it last month. most of them saying it was "boring, a real snoozer". but I just can't believe that. this movie is gonna be anything but boring.
Seeing this tomorrow night by the way.
Where at? You better write a review of this!
Arclight in Hollywood. I am officially a SCREENER now.
First the fountain, then this. Sir, I envy you.
Put your Gondry right here my friend - and watch your mind bend...
zzzzzzzzzz
That is precisely what The Science of Sleep does. Those BIG HANDS literary come out of the screen, reaches into your forehead and bats around your cookie dough brain. It fucks with you - puts you directly into Stephane's mind and confusion. You gotta appreciate how Michel's stories stay true to the REAL of the surreal and give you situations and emotions that you realate with. I've been in Stephane's situation - that moment of first meeting someone and not thinking much of them or an attraction to them, and then suddenly something happens - your feelings change... but hers end up not being as mutual... or so that's how it goes in your mind and then you're tortured.
zzzzzzzzzz
This story is about HIM solely. About dealing with himself and his faults through his dreams mixed with reality of course. And it's high-larious. This humor is so original and so refreshing. Gael was spectac - a pleasing ingredient for a Gondry tale. The chick from 21 Grams (too lazy to look up) was one of the most PERFECT CASTS I've seen in ages. The main office dude (too lazy to look up) is a comic genius. It felt so... GOOD watching this film. It engages such an intimate feeling. I wasn't quite sure about the ending. I would lie if I didn't say there was a certain unfullfillment about it at first. But then I got to thinking about how it did not compromise and made you feel a certain way, so I suppose it got the job done.
zzzzzzzzzz
We were a part of the 20 picked for the focus group afterwards and that was some great discussion. Once again (like The Fountain), impossible to market this film. It WILL NOT be as mainstream as Eternal Sunshine and everyone commented on that (probably get a Huckabees run). Everyone commented on how we were all there for Gondry... and then to our suprise, there he was with the execs, sippin' on a coke, listenin' to our thoughts. Which means he heard my comment on how fans will be quite satisfied with this extraordinary follow up.
wow, I am so excited. That clip we've seen, that's not edited it out? Are there more moments like that? Hows the score, other musics? So many questions, don't know how to ask them, but you are so goddamn lucky.
Thanks for the great review.
Clip is there indeed.
WAY more moments like that.
Score is fantastic and adds to the mindfucking.
And also, the three languages idea works SO WELL and adds to the high-larity. You'll see why Gael was the perfect choice regarding this.
Quote from: ©brad on April 14, 2006, 01:50:46 PM
:yabbse-thumbdown:
But. It. Messes with. Your thoughts. And what's going on. Precisely.
And the music fuels that. So :yabbse-thumbup:
Quote from: The Artist Formerly Known As on April 14, 2006, 02:20:27 PM
Quote from: ©brad on April 14, 2006, 01:50:46 PM
:yabbse-thumbdown:
But. It. Messes with. Your thoughts. And what's going on. Precisely.
And the music fuels that. So :yabbse-thumbup:
that's great and i'm excited. i just don't like the term "mindfuck."
trippy.
i prefer mindfuck to trippy. if it must be said. at least pozer backs it up with a great review.
groove.
Here is a clip:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fqK4OuRR5pA
watch the french trailer here (http://www.gaumont.fr/films/sleep/video/sdr_fa_qtlarge.mov).
isn't it grand
also, clips (http://www.gaumont.fr/films/sleep/extrait.html)!
INTERVIEW: Michel Gondry Talks 'Science'
Source: RopeofSilicon | June 19, 2006
Full disclosure, I didn't like The Science of Sleep very much. I think European audiences will find it much more appealing, it's very stream of consciousness. I just couldn't find a way to get into it because I didn't love the focus of the film. However, Michel Gondry is a director I do love. He's was the director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which won an Oscar for best original screenplay for his pal Charlie Kaufman) and Dave Chappelle's Block Party which I feel is the most underrated film of the year.
The Science of Sleep takes a look at dreams, how people come together in romantic relationships and the communcation gaps that haunt us all. At the very least it's ambitious and innovative which is more than 99 percent of movies (or directors) can claim. Gondry himself is a great guy, when I found out I had a chance to interview him I said, "Where, and how many mint Milanos are needed?" (he crunched on them throughout the interview, the perfect compliment to his tea). Read on to glean some knowledge on one of the best young directors on the planet and also to hear about Kirsten Dunst in Be Kind Rewind, an Extended Block Party DVD, an alternate version of The Science of Sleep and his feelings on Claymation. Enjoy!
When I entered the room Michel Gondry was working on a drawing, a picture of a scene from the movie (The Science of Sleep). I immediately coveted it and when he asked if I wanted one of those mint Milano cookies I asked for the drawing instead. Swell guy that he is, he even went to the trouble of making it out to me and autographing it. Now I call him a triple threat.. director, writer, artist. Check out the pic at the end of the interview. Thanks Michel!
Do you think most or all relationships are built upon a flawed premise?
It's a lot about timing, if you're not careful you fall in love too fast or too early. Your desire, your attraction can be very hard for someone who doesn't share it. If you don't have the same response at the beginning it can become too intense.
Can you talk about some of the effects used in Science of Sleep? Is it Claymation?
I don't like Claymation; to be honest it's not charming to me. I like Wallace and Gromit, it's a very good story but I like to take objects and transform them. We did two months of animation with a small crew eight months before we started shooting.
Do you consider yourself a director who pushes boundaries?
I like to try different things on a technical level. This idea of a character swimming in a tank with a flying view of Paris in the background, it's an idea I've had for ten or fifteen years but I've never seen it done. Now I understand why, because you shoot underwater which is uncomfortable and dangerous but it would have been boring on blue screen.
Do you feel like there are similarities between Eternal Sunshine's offbeat reality and Science of Sleep's offbeat reality?
It's difficult to follow up Eternal Sunshine because it was very well received. People say "It's too bad you didn't do this one with Charlie Kaufman," well, I wish I could do all my movies with him but he's busy doing other stuff! This one was started before Eternal Sunshine and I collaborated on both of them, but this one is more naïve and doesn't have that science fiction element.
As an aside, Dave Chappelle's Block Party is one of my favorites of the year.
Oh thanks. Yeah, I worked with my friend Jeff Buchanan, he brought so much to it, and it was such a nightmare. We had nine hours of concert with nine cameras and the rest of the day we had one or two cameras. I hope they are going to release a long version in September, an extended DVD. It's going to be every song, maybe 40 minutes more. On Science of Sleep I'm going to do a B version of the movie on the DVD that's made up entirely of the deleted scenes, it will be 45 minutes long.
Is Dunst official for Be Kind Rewind?
Yeah, we're shooting in September. She was supposed to be in The Science of Sleep but she got a little scared and decided not to.
You've worked with some amazing comics, Jim Carrey, Dave Chappelle, and now Jack Black.
I love comedy. Even working with Charlie Kaufman, they are really good at blurring the line between comedy and drama. Chappelle's method is he doesn't want to be funny at first, he wants to capture people's attention, and then he's going to cross the line, completely out of the blue. It's great.
Are you doing a lot of effects for Be Kind Rewind?
No, they are doing all the effects themselves. They take the tapes that have been erased, the VHS, they re-shoot them on top. Say it's an old movie they shoot through layers of hanging string to pretend it is scratchy. They shoot through a fan to make it flickering. They use firecrackers for sound. It's very fun. After all, I don't do movies to get bored.
AND NOW THE ARTISTRY OF MICHEL GONDRY
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi5.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fy154%2Fpubrick%2Fgondryart.jpg&hash=426c00423d861634762616a0c284f1526134d4c7)
pubrick edit: added the drawing.
I should've known that there was gonna be a fancier version of blockparty out soon.
SHOULD HAVE KNOWN.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg180.imageshack.us%2Fimg180%2F1386%2F16288ls9ba.jpg&hash=4227cb9ed8dd502aea260e3e9266648e9e62eeae)
i was just wondering when we were gonna see a poster for this. an english trailer would be nice too considering the damn thing comes out in a month.
Quote from: modage on June 29, 2006, 04:17:34 PMan english trailer would be nice too considering the damn thing comes out in a month.
Go
here. (http://pdl.warnerbros.com/wip/us/med/scienceofsleep/science_of_sleep_the_tlr1_qt_700.mov)
wow. cool. this will be good (but GT will not like it). this is giving the indiefied Little Miss Sunshine trailer a run for its money with Velvet Underground, Strokes and Death Cab for Cutie!
when does this come out in the states?
august 4th nyc
Quote from: modage on June 30, 2006, 08:36:25 AM
GT will not like it
GT will like what i tell him to like.
Quote from: Pubrick on June 30, 2006, 09:39:17 AM
Quote from: modage on June 30, 2006, 08:36:25 AM
GT will not like it
GT will like what i tell him to like.
reminds these two folks that GT liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on July 01, 2006, 12:01:52 PM
Quote from: Pubrick on June 30, 2006, 09:39:17 AM
Quote from: modage on June 30, 2006, 08:36:25 AM
GT will not like it
GT will like what i tell him to like.
reminds these two folks that GT liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
reminds these three folks that it was after i told him to like it.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fhem.bredband.net%2Fgrosser%2Fego%2Fego-golf.gif&hash=d7a3ba228a6763225d080d605d933e61a64e9605)
i know the movie will be awesome but i don't like trailer very much. the first half is fine, but the second half seems to be catering to the garden state crowd. oh well, no need to be nit picky over a trailer, this may very well be the movie of 2006.
Quote from: JG on July 01, 2006, 04:03:40 PM
i know the movie will be awesome but i don't like trailer very much. the first half is fine, but the second half seems to be catering to the garden state crowd. oh well, no need to be nit picky over a trailer, this may very well be the movie of 2006.
yeah i agree. i really don't dig the use of death cab. i mean i like death cab but i've had enough of them in movies/trailers.
could very well be indeed.
the cinematography is insanely good.
ive never heard of this Bompoint guy, but he captured that airy dreamy quality.
can't wait to see it.
Quote from: A Matter Of Chance on June 30, 2006, 09:11:01 AM
when does this come out in the states?
scratch that.
SCIENCE OF SLEEP has been moved from August to a September 15th release for New York and LA venues, goes limited on the 22nd, and expands in the following weeks until a wide release October 6th.
Tone-wise, the trailer reminds me of CQ, just with dream sequences instead of movie sequences. Maybe it's just because cute French chicks all sound alike to me, I don't know. But after some of the mixed things I had been hearing about the movie, that trailer went and got me really excited for it all over again.
not sure if this has been posted. the french website...
http://www.lasciencedesreves-lefilm.com/accueil.htm
http://www.apple.com/trailers/warner_independent_pictures/thescienceofsleep/large.html
I just saw this film this week and loved it! :bravo:
So I guess the less we know the better then, right?
exactly right. don't even watch the trailer if possible. gives waaaay too much.
Quote from: pozeR on July 24, 2006, 12:09:01 AMdon't even watch the trailer if possible. gives waaaay too much.
Being I posted the trailer waaaay back on the previous page before you told us this, I'll care of it:
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.badastronomy.com%2Fpix%2Fmib_neuralyzer.jpg&hash=7ba30118c3850b65788e3f88bcfab0958c7b1613)
genius.
indieWIRE Presents: "The Science of Sleep" Filmmaker Michel Gondry
indieWIRE continues its monthly series with Apple Store - SoHo that presents indie film professionals discussing various aspects of the filmmaking process. On Tuesday, August 29th, (7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m) Filmmaker Michel Gondry will discuss his narrative, documentary, and music video work, including his upcoming film, "The Science of Sleep," a playful romantic fantasy set inside the topsy-turvy brain of Stephane Miroux (GAEL GARCIA BERNAL), an eccentric young man whose dreams constantly invade his waking life. Warner Independent Pictures is releasing "The Science of Sleep" in theaters September 2006. The event will be moderated by indieWIRE Editor in Chief Eugene Hernandez.
awesome!
I loved this movie so much! Hooray for practical effects!
It's completely loose and rambling in the most beautiful way possible. It doesn't have the narrative structure of Eternal Sunshine, but it doesn't really need it.
It's clearly a very personal film for Gondry, and although it's very much a comedy, it's also very sad and melancholy.
And the ending is sheer perfection.
i hate to say it but i didnt care too much for this film. it's not even that i was disappionted because my expectations were high, its more that i didnt feel that the film got anywhere near what could've made it great. i didnt have any delusions it would be as good or better than Eternal Sunshine, but as a filmmaker and storyteller it really does not make sense in his filmography to come after that film. its easier for me to believe knowing that he had written this script years ago and was only recently able to make it, but i dont know that he applied much of the growth and maturity he'd picked up along the way to this. i knew that gondry had a childlike sensibility but the film really borders on just immature (and embarrassing) in its view of love and relationships. while it is probably something i could've related to a in high school or college but not something that means much to me today. beyond that the film is long and its dizzying mix of reality and hyperactive dreams did not quite hold together. and the score was entirely lackluster, i kept wishing and wondering what some jon brion could've done to save the film. as it is, it should've been a 'lost' film after Human Nature, but coming off Eternal Sunshine its at best a curiosity. :( sorry gondry! i still love ya.
Drifting in dreamland
In "The Science of Sleep," Michel Gondry steps from "Eternal Sunshine" into a handmade fantasy world where reality is just a state of mind.
Source: Los Angeles Times
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fmedia%2Fphoto%2F2006-09%2F25249243.jpg&hash=71897fce2e317792d2ab2546c90cdff6fb58264b)
Rather than using the sophisticated computer wizardry available today, filmmaker Michel Gondry prefers to call upon an old-fashioned array of camera tricks and animation techniques to create beguiling movies full of wide-eyed wonder laced with a touch of European sadness.
His latest film, "The Science of Sleep," even more than the rhapsodic "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," for which he shared a best original screenplay Oscar, takes the viewer on a journey into an idiosyncratic world made of yarn and whimsy, cardboard and melancholy.
This time, Gondry, whose visual style has marked the music videos of such artists as the White Stripes and Björk, wrote the film alone, drawing from bits and pieces of his personal history — the bad jobs he once held, the oddball devices he once created. Stephane (the charmingly feckless Gael García Bernal) becomes increasingly obsessed with his new neighbor, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), even as his vivid dream life becomes ever more real to him, spilling into his interactions with her and with his mind-numbing job at a calendar company.
The film opens inside Stephane's head, more specifically, inside his conception of his mind. Imagining himself as a makeshift television host, he oversees his life with cameras made from cardboard boxes, a shower curtain backdrop and window shades for eyelids. From there, the film pirouettes between Stephane's dreary workaday life and his vibrant dream reality, where he can fly free from responsibility.
"I think whenever you are in Stephane's head you should have the feeling he constructed this universe," Gondry said recently by phone in his high, sing-song voice. "I was not aware of it when I started, but as I went along, I realized it totally made sense to have this handmade quality going on in his head."
To realize his vision for such a personal film, which opens Friday, the French-born Gondry actually turned to others. Lauri Faggioni, who had worked with Gondry in the past, was enlisted to create any number of things that spring to wondrous life in Stephane's dreams through stop-motion animation — shoes that tie themselves, a boat that's filled with twig trees, a typewriter that becomes a monster, a toy horse that gallops across the room
Baptiste Ibar was recruited to paint the portraits for Stephane's idea for a calendar in which each month depicts a major disaster — a doomed airliner one month, an earthquake the next.
Faggioni first worked with Gondry when she was simultaneously asked by a costume designer to create a suit that looked like excrement to be worn by the comedian David Cross for one of Gondry's short films, and by the director himself when he wanted to animate the small vintage-looking cloth birds she was making at the time.
Subsequently, Faggioni worked with Gondry in a number of different capacities, including set design and choreography. It is an example of a way of working that Gondry says he picked up from singer Björk, collaborating with people who may lack for experience but make up for it with enthusiasm and fresh ideas.
"I like working with someone who is starting, because you feel everything is possible," Gondry said. "It's a great energy and it's by definition artistic because you can't predict what it's going to be. It's the opposite of a vicious circle, it's a positive circle. You get as much creativity as craft."
That outsider creativity can be key because Gondry isn't always direct about what he's looking for. "He starts to explain it, and he gets excited and it's hard to follow his train of thought," Faggioni said, speaking by phone from her workshop in New York. "But you get the gist of what he wants. He's not necessarily good at articulating himself, unless it's what he doesn't want. He knows what he doesn't want.
"He still thinks about things in terms of how a kid would tackle a project. It's from an excited place and there's not any real restrictions. He doesn't think in terms of restrictions."
For Ibar, "The Science of Sleep" was a first-time collaboration. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design who has been selling his paintings privately, Ibar was brought to Gondry's attention when the artist's sister was tutoring the filmmaker's son.
Again, the collaboration began with a few discussions, as Gondry presented Ibar with some basic ideas — which disasters to depict, a few visual cues — and sent the painter on his way. Ibar came back with a series of sketches and then created the 12 paintings within the span of about a month.
Ibar had been familiar with Gondry's work and found they had a mutual attraction to the childlike, slightly-off qualities that come through in the "disastrology" paintings. "He wanted a black humor, like a kid trying to do a painting of something really dramatic because the proportions are off and things are drawn funny," Ibar said. "But at the same time, it's almost more real than trying to capture it.
"That's the attraction to a naive feeling, the handmade aspect that Michel is really after. It's what makes his work so moving."
Quote from: modage on September 07, 2006, 10:33:11 PM
i hate to say it but i didnt care too much for this film. it's not even that i was disappionted because my expectations were high, its more that i didnt feel that the film got anywhere near what could've made it great. i didnt have any delusions it would be as good or better than Eternal Sunshine, but as a filmmaker and storyteller it really does not make sense in his filmography to come after that film. its easier for me to believe knowing that he had written this script years ago and was only recently able to make it, but i dont know that he applied much of the growth and maturity he'd picked up along the way to this. i knew that gondry had a childlike sensibility but the film really borders on just immature (and embarrassing) in its view of love and relationships. while it is probably something i could've related to a in high school or college but not something that means much to me today. beyond that the film is long and its dizzying mix of reality and hyperactive dreams did not quite hold together. and the score was entirely lackluster, i kept wishing and wondering what some jon brion could've done to save the film. as it is, it should've been a 'lost' film after Human Nature, but coming off Eternal Sunshine its at best a curiosity. :( sorry gondry! i still love ya.
i think it's a perfect follow up and belongs just where it is. why did the love & relationship stuff come off as immature (and embarrassing) to you? i related completely. and the 'childlike sensibility' is what this film is all about. it's fucking hilarious and is not meant to be in the same vein as eternal sunshine. can't wait to see it again.
Quote from: pozer on September 10, 2006, 04:10:11 PM
Quote from: modage on September 07, 2006, 10:33:11 PM
while it is probably something i could've related to a in high school or college but not something that means much to me today.
i related completely
how old are you?
the film is about as good as Human Nature. despite its visual invention, it does not quite work.
I thought the relationship stuff was very on point - and I think it's very personal for Gondry, and probably fairly representative of him and his own relationships. I certainly connected to it quite a bit. There's also a deep layer of misanthropy to the film that makes it very sad - it seems all light and fluffy on the surface, but there are these undercurrents to it that really run deep, and which make it far more substantial than it may immediately appear to be. Without giving any spoilers away, this melancholy is why the ending is so especially beautiful.
Eternal Sunshine may have had a much stronger screenplay, but this film is scarcely its lesser for its lack of the same.
I'll have a long review of it up in a day or two.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pastemagazine.com%2Fimages%2Farticles%2F3297_image_1.jpg&hash=0d368af5e526b2b606a8f85d68cd3743814001c4)
Michel Gondry's Science of Sleep
In Your Wildest Dreams
Source: Paste Magazine
You have the most fascinating dreams. Unique, vibrant and random, they clearly reveal your artfulness and intelligence—that is, until you try to tell someone about them. Somehow when you get to that part about the bear and your 6th-grade math teacher on the roller coaster, your listener doesn't find it half as profound as you're sure it must be.
"To translate a dream in a really striking way, you don't give a strict interpretation," explains Michel Gondry, the director known best for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, his Oscar-winning collaboration with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. "You want to keep some of that abstraction and you want to convey the emotional effect. If you just recount all the details, it's boring and it just interests you."
But if there's anyone whose dreams would be endlessly fascinating in the retelling it would probably be Gondry, who not only visually conjured Kaufman's heady, sumptuous exploration of love, loss and memory in Eternal Sunshine, but created groundbreaking music videos like Björk's "Human Behaviour," the Foo Fighters' "Everlong" and The White Stripes as LEGOs in "Fell in Love With a Girl." He's also the first director to use "morphing" in a music video, and he's the technical innovator behind filmmaking landmarks like the method of shooting several still cameras in an array to create the illusion of someone hanging frozen in air, as seen in Björk's "Army of Me" video. (Later this technique was used to stunning effect in The Matrix.)
In The Science of Sleep, the first feature he both wrote and directed, Gondry applies this visionary invention to his longtime fascination with dreams, using plenty of his own subconscious adventures in the process. The story follows the days and (more often) nights of Stéphane Miroux (Gael García Bernal), a twentysomething artist who moves to his mother's native France after his father's death in Mexico. When he starts work at a dreary job and meets an intriguing neighbor coincidentally named Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), his dreams begin wreaking havoc on his waking life, and the line between what's real and what's a blip in his nocturnal synapses starts to blur just as much for the audience as it does for Stéphane.
To say the dreamscapes here are fantastical is an understatement; Stéphane's sleeping world involves, for starters: a talk-show set (for "Stéphane TV") made of cardboard and egg cartons, machines that take insect form, cities paved with LPs, and a rock band consisting of his coworkers dressed in cat costumes. It's up to us to guess which of these Gondry dreamed up while sleeping, and which he invented on the page.
"I've always been interested in the dream process," he says, explaining that, even as a child, he tried to make real-world connections with people while in a lucid-dream state—for example, saying something to a family member in a dream and hoping they'd repeat it to him when they were both fully awake. "That was the starting point for the story, connecting [with people] in dreams, but not being able to connect in real life."
Gondry decided to take that need for connection (referred to, by Stéphane, as "Parallel Synchronized Randomness") and add the possibly budding romance between Stéphane and Stéphanie, both creative but introverted people who have problems enough communicating without Stephane's increasingly shaky hold on reality. To make things worse, Spanish-speaking Stéphane's lack of skill in French forces the two to have limited, often bizarre conversations in English—a screenplay quirk Gondry fully intended. "You use a different part of your brain," when you have to speak with someone in your non-native language, he says. "It can give you some freedom to interact with people and ... you might feel less self-conscious about what you're saying." On the other hand, he adds, it can also lead to awkward misunderstandings and the feeling—that Stéphane has—of being an outsider.
Gondry, a Frenchman, has experienced this in the U.S., adding a personal touch to the story. But there's actually little in the film that doesn't seem personal. Among much else, Stéphane's apartment is in a building in Paris where Gondry once lived, and the office where Stéphane works is a piece-by-piece reconstruction—down to the wall hangings and typesetting equipment—of an office Gondry worked in more than 20 years ago. These details provided a sense of familiarity for the director as he took on the challenge of both writing and directing a film, something that was frightening, "especially after having directed scripts by Charlie Kaufman," he says. "It was very scary, but ... I guess I'm going to be scared no matter what, so I might as well be scared doing something I haven't done before."
Still, he's thankful to have worked with the "brilliant and original" Kaufman and says it's helped his own writing. "I cannot compare," he laughs, "but I try my best." It turns out Gondry greatly enjoyed being forced to clearly express himself and to "learn to communicate emotions" to the point that his dreams—quite literally—could become reality. At one point after a party during the film's shooting, he went back to get a bag from the reinvented office set of the place he once worked, and felt amazed by the point he'd reached in his career. "I sat for awhile and looked around, and I thought it was crazy that I had the opportunity to do this—to take a memory and have a crew of people re-create it. I'm quite lucky to have that."
Surely people who loved Gondry's work on Eternal Sunshine—not to mention Dave Chapelle's Block Party or the 2001 film also written by Kaufman, Human Nature—will be thrilled with his first foray into screenwriting. They'll also get to see film techniques Gondry says he's been "cooking" in his head for years, like the blast of "spin art" that starts the film, the illusion of flying created by Bernal swimming through a tank of water with projected animation, or Stéphane's fantastic invention for Stéphanie, the One-Second Time-Travel Machine. And this is just the beginning: this fall, Gondry will start shooting another film he penned (named, as of press time, Be Kind, Rewind), and he has plans for many more projects, including music videos—something he still likes to do.
For the most part, though, writing films hasn't changed Gondry's directing style. He still likes to keep it "loose," leaving room for "some happy accident," and he still often lets actors make their own decisions. He says that in a restaurant recently, a waiter asked him if he wanted the food he'd just ordered for a first or second course. "I couldn't make up my mind," says Gondry, "so I said something and [the waiter] didn't really hear me, but he left, and I said to the person with me, 'That's how I direct people.' I knew he didn't understand what I said, but he made his own decision based on that misunderstanding, and I think that's as good as any decision I could make." Often if Gondry gives an actor direction, and the actor asks, "Okay, so should I do this?" and it's the opposite of what was requested, he still says yes. "It's not really important," he says. "It's just a question of moving forward and conveying the right energy."
He was very happy with the interpretations his Science of Sleep actors achieved. Bernal, not really known for his comic roles, manages to coax big laughs while also being disarmingly sensitive; Alain Chabat, a popular comedian in France, provides comic relief as Stéphane's raunchy coworker, Guy; and Gainsbourg—a highly respected French actress who has yet to gain a major following in the U.S.—fully "embodies" Stéphanie, Gondry says, bringing the sweet-yet-strong character beautifully to life.
Though Sleep and Eternal Sunshine are multilayered, Gondry says he doesn't want to make confusing films (he says he can't stand overly plotted thrillers), he just wants to make films he'd enjoy watching and create stories people can connect with. He says people probably connected to Sunshine because there was something to it (perhaps in the way its lead—Jim Carrey as Joel—appeared weak and rejected) that resonated with them. This is why he loves Charlie Chaplin films; though some people find them "too sentimental," Gondry says they touch us because they show that even our heroes can be vulnerable. "I feel like [in films] we need to talk about the little shames we have. Then people can relate and say, 'Oh, maybe I'm not the only one to be ... rejected, to not be strong.'"
At the same time, Gondry says, the best films don't explain everything to the audience. "I like movies that don't give away all their keys, because I like to look for them," he says. Like dreams, perhaps they should be a little abstract, a little more open to interpretation. And, like a dream described to someone else, a film's strength is all in the way the story is told. "It's all about figuring out how you're going to make the story happen," he says. "It's [finding] the invisible thing that you have to put in while you are telling your story that will make it special."
Michel Gondry Dreams Big
Source: ComingSoon
A little over two years ago, French director Michel Gondry, who had already broken into American mainstream culture with his innovative music videos for the likes of Bjork, did the same for the movie biz with his second collaboration with writer Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, an eccentric romantic comedy that received many awards and accolades.
For his second film of 2006, after a sidetrip into the concert film, Dave Chappelle's Block Party, Gondry treads similar ground as "Eternal Sunshine," again exploring unrequited love, but this time telling a more personal story about Stephane, a young dreamer played by Gael García Bernal, who can't seem to win over his beautiful neighbor. The result was another inventive and eclectic film called The Science of Sleep, which went deep into the world of dreaming and dreamings.
"It was all happening during the writing of the script, so it's very autobiographical," Gondry admitted in his second interview of the year with ComingSoon.net. "We shot in the building where I used to live with my son and his mother. I wanted to explore a story that happened to me 25 years ago in '83, when I was in Paris, and two years ago in New York, so I combined them together, but it was important that this was shot in Paris. There's a sense of a small [calendar] company that is very typical of Paris, and when I was working there, I was doing Stephane's job."
Gondry even had a similar situation where his boss didn't appreciate his artistic creativity. "I proposed my paintings for a calendar, because [the calendars] were so crap, really tacky paintings or nude images, and I went to see the boss with my portfolio. My project was to do shop windows of stores-I had this impressionist style of painting coming from art school with very detailed paintings of shop windows and it got rejected."
Even though The Science of Sleep returns Gondry to his French roots, he didn't want to completely lose his newfound American audience. "I was not ready to go to France and do a full French language movie, because I've been living and working here most of the time," he said. "I think it's nice to have this layer of a foreign language to express emotion. My experience has been to deal with this language that I don't really masterize (sic) to express my feelings, and you get sort of a split personality when you move from one country to another and develop new relationships, some are in English and some are in French and they don't mix. It gives you a different type of personality and a very small degree of schizophrenia."
The Science of Sleep is even more distinctive for its exploration of dreams and dreaming to try to change your life. "I remember having strong dream experiences, and I remember sometimes being aware of my dreaming and experimenting," Gondry told us. "It's not a cult I follow or a way of life or anything, it's just I have a very weird sleep pattern and I have very hard time to sleep. But when I sleep, a lot of time, I dream very vividly and I can remember clearly a lot of them. I sometimes go to the internet and read about lucid dreaming, but it's a little too new age for me. I try to understand what could have influenced the dream after the dream and how the information from reality recurs in the dream, so I write that down, but I never really tried to influence the dream."
What about interpreting dreams, something that so many people try to do? Gondry's not having any of that. "I don't believe in symbols because I think if you dream of a garage, there's a very strong chance you've been in a garage and the memory of this garage is associated with another memory of something you experienced lately. So when your brain got reactivated in this memory, the memory of the garage got refired in the process. So it has nothing to do with a book you could define every image or symbol, because it doesn't mean a symbol that's universal, that's bullsh*t. I mean, a lot of people dream they're losing their teeth. They always say it's because you're sick or you're afraid of being sick. Maybe this is true, but maybe it's simply because when you were a kid, you lost your teeth already, and you see old people losing their teeth, and it seems obvious that you associate that with old age and death. Now, if you dream of a tree, it's a symbol of a penis and that's bullsh*t."
"It's a way I've been thinking for years," he said about coming up with the distinctive images in those dream sequences. "My house is in cardboard and staircases are in paper. To me, this is a very strong image. You can actually make something out of garbage and recycling textures, and they give you a sense of freedom and independence, that you don't have to ask somebody to help you. You can actually do it and it's easier to do it than to ask somebody to do it. I'm not saying I did it all myself. For this movie, I had a crew, but it was a small crew, and it was people who share my love for this type of craft. Ultimately, you feel that you're in a dream that has made by Stephane, not by the director. I guess if you know me, you'd see the parallel, but as an audience, you don't feel you're going into a CGI world that has been created by a team [of animators].
"It's true, there's a lot of CGI, but I think you really have to start with something real," he continued when asked about his use of computers to create the animated sequences. "I did a little bit in 'Eternal Sunshine' where the house is crumbling. Half the effects were done in CGI, but we had a lot on stage. We took this house and filled it up with sand and put the wood in water, and when you've established the esthetic, you can use CGI because you don't start from scratch. In this film, we couldn't afford to have complex special effects, and the fact that everything is done by hand lets you feel that you're always going into Stephane's constructions. I don't want to have any preconceived feelings about CGI and when it's used. I just saw a movie recently where all the effects were done in CGI and half of these could have been done in-camera and I regretted it, because it took me out of the film. Something that looks on the edge now, in five years is going to look very dated because the technology keeps evolving." Gondry then showed us how his animators took a cloth horse model and shot it frame-by-frame to make it look like a real horse.
When asked about the differences between working with Gael doing comedy as opposed to doing drama with a comedian like Jim Carrey, Gondry didn't see the difference. "It's interesting because they have this image of Gael, but to me, he's a comedic actor. I think my favorite movie he did was 'Y Tu Mama Tambien,' which was really hilarious. I think the situation comic, I believe him to be funny without controlling that. Like when he exposed his calendar, he came up with a broader version, which I was not expecting, but when I saw it, I thought it was hilarious. I had in mind him being very shy, but I like his take, that he's all confident and he's then speaking out loud and then shot down by the director. To me, he's extremely funny, almost Chaplinesque."
That humor was very important to Gondry especially when dealing with themes of unrequited love. "I'm starting from a place that feels to me like a tragedy, like anyone who goes through a break-up, but I don't want to be too heavy in the script," he confirmed. "I initially thought she was going to slam the door and walk away from him, and that's the end, or maybe he jumps through the window, but I don't want to leave with that on my eyes, so I was going to make it sweet at the end. But it's bittersweet, it's not necessarily happy. It's interesting because all the girls they believe she's in love with him, and all the guys believe she doesn't like him."
To wrap things up, we asked Gondry what kind of freedom came from writing his own script, compared to his last few movies with Charlie Kaufman. "I have more freedom to change it because I don't have to ask anyone," he said, "I have confidence problems, so I surrounded [myself] with people who give me good support. It's a combination of being precise, to be able to do all the pieces of the puzzle that you know will hold it together to tell the story. In each parameter, I need to breathe life, and for the rest, you want to leave it for people to come up with stuff or it's only going to be one vision and it's going to very narrow. I leave the actors a lot of freedom in fact, and sometimes, my job as the director is to tell them if they make a joke that they forgot is repeated in the next scene. 'No, you don't want to do that now, because it's going to kill this line later.' Except for that, I don't give them direction for the first take, and if it works, it's great. As soon as I speak to them, they're going to forget their idea, so I'm always curious to see what they have in mind."
You can see how it all turned out when Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep opens on Friday, September 22 in select cities.
New Gondry film takes fans inside director's mind
If you've ever wanted to get inside a movie director's mind, France's Michel Gondry will give you the chance on Friday with his newest effort, "The Science of Sleep."
Gondry, director of the critically lauded and quirky "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, opens the film in major U.S. cities this week and plans to show it across the country later this month.
It is a dream-like tale of a young man's inability to tell a woman he loves her, and the director said the story grew from his own experiences maturing into a man who is better at expressing himself in pictures than in words.
Much of "Science of Sleep" is told visually and takes place inside the mind of the main character, a young man named Stephane who falls head-over-heels for a woman, Stephanie.
"You want to feel at the end of the movie that you shared their lives," Gondry told Reuters, "and I wanted to express a lot of things that they experience, that I experienced in my life, that I had not necessarily seen in movies."
For moviegoers who did not catch "Eternal Sunshine," much of its romantic tale deals with the main character's memory. Movie fans also might recall 1999's "Being John Malkovich," written by Charlie Kaufman, in which audiences were taken inside the head of the actor.
"Eternal Sunshine" was co-written by Kaufman and Gondry, and Gondry's first directing effort, 2001's "Human Nature" about a woman with too much body hair, was written by Kaufman. So the pair share an offbeat approach to films and filmmaking.
HIS MIND; HIS WAY
"Science of Sleep" falls into the same quirky vein, but is Gondry's first effort as sole writer and director, which he said freed him to tell his own story, his own way.
"You sit down with a block of paper, and you can create a world. That is just amazing. A lot of people have asked me to remake movies, and I have no intention," he said.
Much like Gondry in his career, Stephane is a frustrated animator stuck in a dead-end job in Paris. Stephane meets and falls for Stephanie, who lives in the apartment next to him.
But Stephane cannot tell her, so his love manifests itself in his dreams. Over time, the boundaries between Stephane's dreams and his real life become blurred, and audiences are left to ponder what is fantasy and what is reality.
In "Science of Sleep," Gondry uses a lot of animation to detail the thoughts inside Stephane's mind. To help create his ideas he bought an old country house from his aunt and converted the property's shuttered sawmill into a studio.
"It was a freeing experience," he said. "Working in this small town, in this house, I would bring in life that was gone a long time ago."
"Science of Sleep," which premiered at January's Sundance Film Festival, is a low-budget ($6 million) movie that will play mostly in U.S. art house theaters and likely not be seen by mainstream audiences in movie megaplexes.
But Gondry said his goal with "Science" was not to create a Hollywood-sized hit, but rather to tell a simple story that touched people.
"I'm not talking about being commercial at all. I'd like for people to respond emotionally to the story and feel it's relevant to them and make them feel better," he said.
saw this tonight. great comedy and great romance. the special effects go a little far sometimes, but the actors were good enough. it was bittersweet and gondry understands his ladies a lot more than kaufman does.
I just feel bad; I have this best friend who makes this kind of movies all the time and he really is like a real-life action hero with all sorts of spontaneous interactions that spill right into his movies. however, people like gondry and others will make him seem like a bandwagon jumper though he actually lives like that.
Quote from: modage on September 10, 2006, 04:32:45 PM
Quote from: pozer on September 10, 2006, 04:10:11 PM
Quote from: modage on September 07, 2006, 10:33:11 PM
while it is probably something i could've related to a in high school or college but not something that means much to me today.
i related completely
how old are you?
the film is about as good as Human Nature. despite its visual invention, it does not quite work.
Although I usually find myself agreeing with Modage most of the time, I don't about Science.
I just came back from the show, it was quite enjoyable. I found the relationship to be relateable (and maybe it's because "I'm still in college", but all my life its been a similar game). The animations however, got a little over the top. Where in this case I could perhaps see eye to eye with what Modage was saying about them. Had they been used in a lighter fashion, maybe they could have stood out more? But when it got chaotic in his dreams it got a little over-done, but other than that no complaints or dissapointments. I actually enjoyed it more (way more) than Eternal Sunshine. 'Til this day, I'm not really sure what the big hype over that movie is...
Quote from: overmeunderyou on September 22, 2006, 11:35:34 PM
I actually enjoyed it more (way more) than Eternal Sunshine.
'Til this day, I'm not really sure what the big hype over that movie is...
whoa really?
oh.. you didn't like Eternal. that explains it.
like an idiot i tried to get tickets at the angelika,
almost subconsciously knowing that they were already sold out for the rest of the night.
should've known that consciously.
seeing it next week.
impressive but it left me cold, and really fucking depressed. like ghostboy said, it's fun(ny) and whimsical but it seemed like the muddled barrage of thoughts and emotions (some connected, some didn't) was an attempt to bury something much darker than any of the superficial elements of the film suggest. it's endearing for its childishness but also juvenile and, like kids can be, annoying at times. some of it feels like reading really bad 12-year-old girl poetry. LOVED the special effects though at times i got tired of gondry indulging in his own virtuoso. good stuff overall.
I really enjoyed that the characters in this movie are actually spontaneous; they are not like the pretentious self-important people in The Dreamer or Garden State who contrive boring gestures and stunts and are photographed like they're the most brilliant thing ever. stephane and stephanie do it like it's the most natural thing in the world. I also like how the distinction between dream and reality is not so obvious, ie. sometimes there aren't clear cues and the special effects are priveleged signs of fantasy--they are just there to illustrate whatever needs to be seen, be they part of a character's conversation or his dream. there is nothing particularly noteworthy about "whats at stake" or some other sort of great motivation; in its place is a fascination with how people with their private histories and worlds interact with one another. I don't like it when people criticize a movie and then its defenders would jump in and say "well, that's the point!" 'cause I just think those are lazy counterarguments and do nothing to convince the critics except a subtler but just as smug version of "you don't get it." so, don't take this defense the wrong way. I merely think it's a very uninhibited movie that strives to be as organic as possible. it plays out the entire romance from the first sight to whatever the hell that ending is, won't spoil it. I don't think it's any messier or more indulgent than annie hall, but stephane just happens to be a bit less articulate than alvy singer. when you're trying to depict the sparks that ignite a relationship, you have to include some magic in there. I think the "magic" depicted in this movie, thanks to the screenplay which includes a good part of the hero's subconscious, isn't as precious as it is in ordinary depiction of romance. the result may be a little deadpan if only because stephane seems head over heels all the time, but I don't think the film's abundance in one thing means it's lacking in anything else. It's quite close to how I feel when I'm in love, and I look nothing like that dreamboat garcia bernal.
Walking home from the theatre after seeing this I felt really depressed. I don't know why, the movie itself isn't that depressing.
*May contain spoilers* While The Science of Sleep isn't as good as Eternal Sunshine it's definitely better than Human Nature. It reminds me of PDL a bit. A female coworker told me she didn't like that movie because Sandlers character scared her. She thought he was crazy enough to do real harm to Emily Watson. It didn't seem to me that Barry Egan would harm anyone except himself (or a restaurant's bathroom). In TSOS it is pretty clear why Stephanie is stand-offish with Stephan. He's a nut, emotionally immature and unclear about his intentions. Stephan apparently doesn't know how to deal with females romantically and pushes Stephanie away. In PDL Lena is inexplicably attracted to Barry. In TSOS Stephanie is quite understandably wary of Stephan. He probably wouldn't physically harm Stephanie but I could see someone coming away with that impression in this movie too. He really loses his shit.
The film is sweet and a little bit heartbreaking. I had After Hours by the Velvet Underground stuck in my head all evening.
Quote from: Champion Souza on September 25, 2006, 10:27:48 PM
I felt really depressed. I don't know why,
oh, it's one of
those reviews.
i'm gonna quote pete's cos i don't want it to get lost.
Quote from: pete on September 23, 2006, 11:49:04 PM
I really enjoyed that the characters in this movie are actually spontaneous; they are not like the pretentious self-important people in The Dreamer or Garden State who contrive boring gestures and stunts and are photographed like they're the most brilliant thing ever. stephane and stephanie do it like it's the most natural thing in the world. I also like how the distinction between dream and reality is not so obvious, ie. sometimes there aren't clear cues and the special effects are priveleged signs of fantasy--they are just there to illustrate whatever needs to be seen, be they part of a character's conversation or his dream. there is nothing particularly noteworthy about "whats at stake" or some other sort of great motivation; in its place is a fascination with how people with their private histories and worlds interact with one another. I don't like it when people criticize a movie and then its defenders would jump in and say "well, that's the point!" 'cause I just think those are lazy counterarguments and do nothing to convince the critics except a subtler but just as smug version of "you don't get it." so, don't take this defense the wrong way. I merely think it's a very uninhibited movie that strives to be as organic as possible. it plays out the entire romance from the first sight to whatever the hell that ending is, won't spoil it. I don't think it's any messier or more indulgent than annie hall, but stephane just happens to be a bit less articulate than alvy singer. when you're trying to depict the sparks that ignite a relationship, you have to include some magic in there. I think the "magic" depicted in this movie, thanks to the screenplay which includes a good part of the hero's subconscious, isn't as precious as it is in ordinary depiction of romance. the result may be a little deadpan if only because stephane seems head over heels all the time, but I don't think the film's abundance in one thing means it's lacking in anything else. It's quite close to how I feel when I'm in love, and I look nothing like that dreamboat garcia bernal.
Quote from: Champion Souza on September 25, 2006, 10:27:48 PM
I had After Hours by the Velvet Underground stuck in my head all evening.
Similar but not quite. "If You Rescue Me" was the one. :yabbse-grin:
FEATURE - Getting Gondry
First off, understand that Eternal Sunshine is not a Michel Gondry film. Secondly, listen to the words of the man himself, who we caught up recently in Los Angeles.
By Kevin Biggers, FilmStew.com
To understand Michel Gondry is to understand the infinitude of yourself.
What this means, precisely, is that in order to understand a filmmaker who indulges in and so effervescently promulgates the idea of the imagination as the only way to cope with the absurdity of life, one must delve into their own imagination, explore it to gain an empathetic vantage point, and then understand that it is here that the infinite self - the one Kierkegaard mused about- resides.
And for as many people who like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there are only a few who liked it for its Gondry-esque conceits, and consequently, there will be only a few who extract the full visceral and imaginative value of Gondry's latest film, The Science of Sleep. I don't mean to be the querulous voice of dissonance and reprobation, but it's true. Just check Rotten Tomatoes for the evidence: no one can discuss The Science of Sleep without comparing it to Eternal Sunshine; and most address this with certain glumness in Sleep's "smallness" compared with its predecessor.
And here is where we can see the most callous aspect of the human condition vis-à-vis the Gondry sensibility. Eternal Sunshine is a Charlie Kaufman film (sorry fellow Gondryites). There's no way around this. Check the replays. Essentially, this is this downfall of its critical evaluation and will be the downfall of its audience reception, not because Eternal Sunshine was such a salient and lasting example of Gondry's artistic hand, but because invariably everyone who passes the word about Gondry's latest inevitably will squash any bemusement over the identity of the director with, "He's the guy who directed Eternal Sunshine."
And thus, the expectations are set, though arguably, not at a higher level, but on a different plane. Kaufman films are steeped in reality despite their mind-bending premises - whether it is a door into John Malkovich's perspective or a memory-erasing clinic - because these machinations of Kaufman's imagination serve as conduits for each film's thematic intentions, each of these premises serves as function of reality. If these things existed in a Gondry film, there'd be no reason to point them out or demarcate them from the rest of reality, there'd be no surprised look on Jim Carrey or John Cusack's faces, because, well, Gondry's reality allots for the reality of the imagination.
And it's in my estimation that this is where much of the derision will reside in the audience - i.e. the most callous aspect of the human condition. In any fiction writing workshop, just try workshopping anything set in a world split in the world of reality and the imagination. You'll be met with everything from, "This doesn't make sense," to, "This couldn't possibly happen in the real world," to, "Things like this don't happen," to, "This is all just too self-indulgent."
You'll be admonished from ever doing anything like that again. No one is ready for their own imagination, much less your imagination. Infinity is reckless and depressing and hopeless, just ask any Camus scholar. People prefer the Hegelian-Cartesian cogito ergo sum world, where reality rules and everything outside this circle of quantification, withers in its inability to express itself.
After recently speaking with Gondry about his latest film, I am surer of this than ever. To start, he says, "When I work with other people, I have to use words. It's more limiting to the process to have to convey my ideas that way. If you want to create something hoping it will go beyond yourself, you can't question every step of the process. It may seem contradictory, but the fact that I'm the only one to make the decisions allows me to have less control of things."
"I want my instinct to be more in control and my intellect to be less in control," he adds, "allowing me to have ideas, images, and concepts without having to justify why."
The Science of Sleep is Gondry's first foray in the role of both screenwriter and director, and because of this, the film is entirely Gondry in texture - a sort of glowing, fantastical, surrealistic, cartoonish, whimsical, lonely-roller-coaster ride. Since the only way to attain such a dizzying and abstract milieu is to peruse your heart, your soul, and your imagination, and rip out whatever you can, such things often tend to seem self-indulgent. After all, this is a guy who, when he first started directing English-speaking music videos, didn't have a firm grip on the language, and thus studied the rhythms and the music palpitations to formulate his ideas and images.
"Nothing is gratuitous," says Gondry of his latest work. "There's no intellectual explanation, the people who will like this film will take their own experience to explain this film."
"I don't think the project was selfish," the French filmmaker insists. "I'm trying to do the best movie I can, and I think the best thing that I could talk about was me." Then, concerning Sleep's ending, he adds, "For a while, I wanted to express my anger and frustration through it. Initially I didn't think they could be together, but I wanted to have hope for myself. I wanted to have as happy of an ending as it could be." (Note: this is in no way a spoiler; you'll see what I mean.)
"It's easier now because people trust me," Gondry suggests. "Sometimes they trust me more than I trust myself. Initially it was difficult because sometimes I have a very convoluted way for something that can be done simply."
Gondry, 43, has made a living off this kind of artistic instantiation. For the first third of his career hitherto, Gondry spent a relatively great deal of time translating Björk's opulent voice into ethereally Jurassic landscape of humanly animals, with the Icelandic singer's voice serving as a forlorn peripatetic. Also, somewhere in this time period, Gondry took the simple experience of attending a live Rolling Stones gig, and allowing it to explode onto the screen, slowing down the temporal quality and allowing the dizzying dimensionality of the experience to be explored, using his bullet-time technique, which has been used ad nauseam since then, most notably in The Matrix in the scene where Neo dodges bullets.
For the second third of his career hitherto, Gondry divided his time amongst a plethora of artistically driven musicians, commercials, and The White Stripes, whose commitment to and trust in Gondry is only matched by that of the aforementioned Björk. It's here that Gondry refined his instantiating hand - e.g. creating Jack White's rue for love lost into a magic stop-action maelstrom of the band, constructed out of Legos, rushing around the frame - and in doing so, made himself an object of artistic splendor and great intrigue.
And now in the final third of his career hitherto, Gondry is dabbling here and there with music videos, though, as seen in his stodgy collaboration with Kanye West, his mind is elsewhere, most pointedly, his mind seems to be most concerned with his full-length features. Let's forget Human Nature as we inevitably will decades from now when discussing the Gondry oeuvre.
And, for the sake of my own sanity, let's push Eternal Sunshine aside, because, for myself and for my fellow Gondryites, The Science of Sleep will mark the beginning of Gondry, the full-length feature filmmaker. For a 43-year-old, Gondry puts forth an extremely boyish façade - coquettishly clay-like cheeks, distracted blue eyes, mussed curly hair - and at times this seems to match his words.
When I ask him if it disconcerts him a bit that people will view the protagonist of his latest film, a facsimile of Gondry played by Gael Garcia Bernal, as childish in his overly exuberant, quasi-stalkerish attempts for romance, he answers, "Those people are boring."
He expands, "It's about adolescent love, kid love, but when you fall in love with somebody, that's what drives us, that's what makes you so happy or so miserable, so I think I'm doing a movie about that."
However, sometimes, the filmmaker is so cerebral about his mind's creations, which seems like a paradox. He explains his recording of his dreams, "Well, generally, I wake up, I recount the dream, I may very quickly think about how it came from me, where these elements came from, what memories, it's more a coincidence, more a present, the dream state is so different from this conversation, I would have to spend lots of time, maybe I should take my notebooks, I realize how they combine, like this part of the dreams reminds me of this memory and this part of this memory and these two are connected, but this doesn't explain it, it comes right out of the blue."
Towards the end of the interview, which by the way is taking place in a room over the Beverly Hills Four Seasons hotel courtyard, where preparation for a wedding is also underway, Gondry, likely worn down from a twelve-hour day, in which he was the sole focus of a press assault, begins to let his interior child roam around. Cue the wedding music.
"What is this f*cking music?" he bellows. "I hope it's not going on for the whole night. If there's a wedding going on I'm going to kill myself."
A PR person explains that the wedding is only going through rehearsal. "Yeah, but if there's a wedding tonight, they might party all night." He turns to me, "I'm a bad sleeper. It's like dying in some ways."
I conclude the interview, a more peaceful tête-à-tête than the above anecdote evinces, by asking, regardless of the ending, about his current disposition. I expect some complex, labyrinthine, digressive explanation of his daily thoughts and his nightly dreams. After all, earlier he mentioned that the previous night's dream consisted of 300 prostitutes invading his apartment.
He pauses, takes a sip of tea, and looks to the side, and then at me, "I'm happy. I'm not the most balanced person. But I feel I'm doing pretty good for me."
lets all say this outloud, using your dumbest or nasaliest voice: "oh! Eternal Sunshine is a Charlie Kaufman film! Meh."
I thought people who write about film with these half-understood ideas of the autuer theory while using big imported words were a thing of the 90's. "it's all gondry." this guy's essay is all shit.
yeah that interview/article/essay/wankfest was shit. Kevin Biggers.. god, even his name is full of itself.
Quote from: MacGuffin on September 28, 2006, 03:08:24 PM
After all, earlier he mentioned that the previous night's dream consisted of 300 prostitutes invading his apartment.
this was the most interesting part, and he left it as an afterthought.
There we go, I thought. A film with the same capacities as its maker: flawed, naive, obsessive, inarticulate. That's how it should be done, this emotional anti-hero. And here was a character that I couldn't find myself relating to terribly much, and at times I wondered even what he was thinking, what was going on, I couldn't understand the context or the intention or the narrative step, and yet because often times there was soon after a universal moment, a shared pain, it made sense to me that all the motions between must have been the characters' logic. And I thought that was wonderful. The film felt personalized. And it didn't hold its characters at a distance, and treat them as observations, but it tucked them in right in the armpit, and it squeezed everything out of the character. Which I think was a lot of bad. That I think made the character a great selection for a protagonist. He didn't need a character arc because there was already the natural arc of a relationship, the arc of being somewhere new, the arc of daily events. The movie didn't sketch out the beats.
In a scene in which Stéphane walks along a French canal I realized that I had seen very little of the city, and that the city I was seeing then was much different from cities I usually see in movies. There aren't establishing shots of buildings in the film. What the outside world is doing we hardly know, save a lunch in the park after leaving work. And this is kind of how the film is. It probably knows about all those other romantic movies, but it's inside its own, and it doesn't have to make concessions to any of the others. It isn't trying to build from them or rehearse its own performance of their shows.
Obviously Gondre is a creative person, but I thought his film offered more than creativity. It had the same gaps as a person, and it felt like meeting someone.
I can see how this would make some depressed, but, it had me all smiles. Pete kinda sorta compared it to Garden State and I completely agree. Even though Stephanes room is still dressed for a child his character sorta is. Any hollywood movie however would have him running into old pals ala' Garden State and Beautiful Girls. So glad none of that was here. It really felt like Gondry just threw his soul into the movie. Love and Creativity are all over the place. It made me think of La Dolce Vita alot. I see it as the ultimate home movie. A lot of people on this board are creative in some form, Mod, I'd think you'd be able to relate to Stephane hardship to relating to the 'outside' world more. I wouldn't deem his behavior immature. It's just a bit awkward, as it should be. I loved the scene in the bar. There was something there that I could directly relate to and it just seemed so pure. Beautiful film. And I can't wait to see it again.
Quote from: killafilm on September 30, 2006, 05:01:24 PM
I wouldn't deem his behavior immature. It's just a bit awkward, as it should be.
tell me i imagined the line "I like your boobs." because that made me cringe right out of my seat. i understand that this was a personal film for him but i dont think that automatically means it has merit. i also think that this is exactly the sort of film that critics would dread from a 'music video director' of style over substance/story. it was an excuse for gondry to load the film with his visual tricks which became overbearing at times. i can only hope that because this was an older script, he has matured and learned from this experience because otherwise i fear for Be Kind, Rewind and any film he is also the screenwriter.
The film is naive, yes, but it revels in this naivete. By reducing Stephane to somewhat of an overgrown child, Gondry looks at love and longing in its purest form, unadulterated and deep. To ask Science of Sleep to provide any real insight on the complexities of a relationship would be to miss the point, I think, cause Gondry is only really trying to achieve a core emotion, which I think he does quite successfully.
Only certain narrative elements were missing, which makes the script feel missing, and perhaps immature, but I venture to say that they weren't needed and the script was perfectly mature itself.
Quote from: modage on September 30, 2006, 11:55:00 PM
Quote from: killafilm on September 30, 2006, 05:01:24 PM
I wouldn't deem his behavior immature. It's just a bit awkward, as it should be.
tell me i imagined the line "I like your boobs." because that made me cringe right out of my seat.
That line occurred in the last scene, which was (regardless of the rest of the film) brilliantly written. He keeps saying all these things like that, these immature sexual slips, because he is by this point completely unable to distinguish reality from what's in his head. That's not the sort of thing you ever tell a girl you like, but it
is something you might not be able to keep yourself from thinking - and Stephane's problem in this scene is that he can't keep himself from
saying what he thinks he's only thinking (or dreaming).
Did you review the movie Ghostboy? If so, link it up. If not, did you like it, or did you not like it, and, can you tell me why in review form?
Quote from: Ghostboy on August 16, 2006, 03:19:58 AM
I loved this movie so much! Hooray for practical effects!
It's completely loose and rambling in the most beautiful way possible. It doesn't have the narrative structure of Eternal Sunshine, but it doesn't really need it.
It's clearly a very personal film for Gondry, and although it's very much a comedy, it's also very sad and melancholy.
And the ending is sheer perfection.
Quote from: Ghostboy on September 10, 2006, 05:29:28 PM
I thought the relationship stuff was very on point - and I think it's very personal for Gondry, and probably fairly representative of him and his own relationships. I certainly connected to it quite a bit. There's also a deep layer of misanthropy to the film that makes it very sad - it seems all light and fluffy on the surface, but there are these undercurrents to it that really run deep, and which make it far more substantial than it may immediately appear to be. Without giving any spoilers away, this melancholy is why the ending is so especially beautiful.
Eternal Sunshine may have had a much stronger screenplay, but this film is scarcely its lesser for its lack of the same.
I'll have a long review of it up in a day or two.
Quote from: Losing the Horse: on October 02, 2006, 05:43:04 PM
Quote from: JG on October 02, 2006, 05:38:23 PM
Quote from: Ghostboy on August 16, 2006, 03:19:58 AM
I'll have a long review of it up in a day or two.
I'm just about done with it. Included in the review will be an attempt to explain why it's almost two months late.
I came out of the theater feeling really...fuzzy. Sort of detached from my physical presence. Gondry had truly created the dream experience for me, that persisted for a few minutes after the movie ended. I think I genuinely like it more than Eternal Sunshine. While other movies have dealth with this same subject (dreaming, reality), Gondry has here finally made me aware of the experience, by actually making me feel like a participant in the dream. The romance itself was touching and depressing all at once, mainly because it's so accurate. The awkwardness, the sometimes childish emotions, the patheticness.
Perhaps it's a long indulgent demonstration of visual tricks, but I didn't see it like that at all. Gondry turns imagery into pathos so effortlessly, it truly feels like everything is in its right place, and moreover like I can't help but play along.
WHV will release Science Of Sleep on February 6th, 2007. In both widescreen and full screen versions. No word on extras yet.
Quote from: MacGuffin on December 24, 2006, 11:15:56 AM
WHV will release Science Of Sleep on February 6th, 2007. In both widescreen and full screen versions. No word on extras yet.
FINALLY. A date set & I'm happy.
I found this on CD WOW! (http://www6.cd-wow.us/detail_results_2.php?product_code=1853326), so if anyone has a better source (Mac??), please share!
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages-cache.cd-wow.com%2Fimages%2F2%2F1167381256_big.jpg&hash=e341fe7b2a1f73a731733e07730b9a5badf11495)
Interactive Features:
Interactive Menus, Scene Selection, Theatrical Trailer, Making Of Feature
Review:
From director Michel Gondry The Science of Sleep is a playful romantic fantasy set inside the topsy-turvy brain of Stephane Miroux (Gael Garcia Bernal), an eccentric young man whose dreams constantly invade his waking life. Stephane pines for next-door neighbour, Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), but she becomes confused by his childishness and shaky connection to reality. Unable to find the secret to Stephanie's heart while awake, Stephane searches for the answer in his dreams.
Special Features:
Audio commentary by writer/director Michel Gondry and cast
The Making of The Science of Sleep
Featurette on Lauri Faggioni, Creator of Animals and Accessories
Linda Serbu Music Video
A DVD I'm eagery awaiting...
Quote from: Slightly Green on January 19, 2007, 11:56:17 AM
I found this on CD WOW! (http://www6.cd-wow.us/detail_results_2.php?product_code=1853326), so if anyone has a better source (Mac??), please share!
Not only that, I have a DVD review:
http://dvd.ign.com/articles/756/756860p1.html
Wonderfully perfect, Mac. You never let me down.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fdvdmedia.ign.com%2Fdvd%2Fimage%2Farticle%2F762%2F762661%2Fthe-science-of-sleep-20070208012106163-000.jpg&hash=e97c7849862a4f178907048874bc1db557696357)
Interview: Michel Gondry
The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine director discusses his 'dream' project and (re-) winds up for his next idiosyncratic odyssey.
It's almost strange to imagine that The Science of Sleep is the culmination of Michel Gondry's career thus far; following a successful career directing music videos, three feature films and an Oscar for best original screenplay, the oddball romantic comedy is something of an understated charmer. And yet, it is absolutely an extension of his work on those previous projects: without the Lego landscapes of his White Stripes work or the hand-crafted head trip of Eternal Sunshine, his erstwhile SoS alter ego Stephane might never have manufactured so many magical dream worlds.
IGN recently spoke to Gondry via phone about The Science of Sleep, which arrives on DVD this week. In addition to discussing the intensely personal nature of the project, the director describes the technical processes by which he brings Stephane's imagination to life, and looks forward to some of the ideas he hopes to explore in future films.
IGN DVD: Have you found that the reception to the movie was what you expected?
Michel Gondry: Well, I think the reception was very positive. People are connecting a lot with the characters and the story, which is what I was really hoping for. I mean, I was hoping it would be bigger, but we did much more business than the movie cost so I guess it's financially positive. But it was the first movie I wrote so it was very personal and it was like a new beginning for me. You know when bands record their first album, they put everything they grew up with basically in it because it's the first album since they were born. Like, say when they were in their 20s, they have 20 years of accumulation, and then when they do a second album two years later they have two years of accumulation. So generally it's more controlled and more organized, but the first album is very special; they don't even have a title, they just have the name of the band, which is interesting, and then for the second album they have to come up with a title which is very artificial, just to separate them. So I feel like this movie is like a first album.
IGN: What seems to connect this film to your others is that you created characters that are deeply sympathetic but not always likeable. Because this movie was so personal for you, was it difficult to create a character who is not always likeable?
Gondry: Well, I think he's likeable. I mean, I hope he is. He is a little bit racy at times but he's not a murderer; he just swears a lot. When the swearing becomes inappropriate his feelings are becoming too intense and he doesn't manage them very well. But I didn't want to make anything from him that would be too [seductive]. Already I had Gael Garcia Bernal who is very charming person, so I think that was enough. It was interesting to see him go all of the way into his unpredictable weakness.
IGN: Was it tough to relinquish control over Stephane once Gael came in and started developing him?
Gondry: Well, it was difficult in the sense - well, obviously this character is based on some of my friends and some of my personality, but it was difficult because physically we are different and we are not the same age. This difference becomes the fiction of the story, but what I do when I meet the actors is I talk a lot with them and I spend a lot of time getting acquainted to understand each other. So when we start shooting we are already on the same page, and I think we define the territory where we both feel welcome or at home. So when we start shooting I don't think there is much that I would ask him that he would feel is inappropriate or he would do that I don't feel is matching the character, because we know each other and we have a very strong friendship by then because we met many times over one year.
So for instance you have the scene where he presents his calendar and he is very forthcoming and like kind of over the top because he is really trying hard to sell his idea. This is not the way I saw it at first but I always leave my actor to come up with their own idea first, and his way was so much better than what I was expecting and that was great. I think it's important to try to get in tune with your actor and then you can give them enough freedom and they can really feel the character exists and they can feel the range of what the character is supposed to do.
IGN: One of the great bonus materials on the DVD is the making-of featurette, which talks about the low-tech approach you took to making the movie's effects. Generally speaking, if you had limitless budgets is that still the way you would prefer to work?
Gondry: I think you can see with some of the videos I've done that they are more sort of sophisticated in terms of the technology, but I think always I will try to experiment. The good thing about doing stuff in-camera is that you just take your chances and commit to one idea while you are shooting, which gives a sort of energy - like maybe if you would have actors on a stage where there is no safety. They have to carry on no matter what happens and cannot stop and just do an effect. I think that doing the special effects in-camera will put you in this position where everything is so impossible that when [it works] by some kind of miraculous success, you are rewarded. It's sort of an energy cycle that's very good for the whole project.
When you see Gael floating there or flying, we used a big tank filled up with water and projected the background, and my producer asked me maybe ten times if I wanted to do it blue screen. I said "no way;" to see somebody flying on a blue screen is like nothing special. But the complication of doing it through the tank and the projection and the cold water and the fact the actor is blind in the water makes it so awkward that it gives it something that you could never achieve [through CGI]. The idea of someone flying through the air is nothing special basically because everybody has experienced that in their dreams and seen it in movies many times. Sometimes it's great like in Crouching Tiger, a great scene with wires, but I wanted to do it my own way and I think when I dream and I'm trying to fly I feel the medium I'm floating in is very thick, and I thought water was perfect.
This is an example, but if I had more money I would still have the water [but] my prediction is that the tank would be bigger and we would have two weeks of time instead of two days to shoot. But I will do CGI for some other effect, and actually I have this project I am writing now that may happen in 90 countries and I've been there and I'm going to use all of their resources to create different special effects.
IGN: Having done this movie that's so personal, do you feel like it's easy or difficult to take on new projects that might be bigger or less personal? We know you have Be Kind Rewind coming up.
Gondry: Be Kind Rewind is finished nearly, and it's going to be really good. [But] I think you should mention the work I did with Dave Chappelle on Block Party because it was really important in my work; he made me think of different aspects of life. Basically I was more prone to talk about creativity and relationships and feelings, and I think in Be Kind Rewind I have the creativity effect, but it's more about coming together. This was brought to me by working with Dave Chappelle and creating this concept of this energy around him, and it really opened my eyes. And obviously I knew these things about community and coming together, but I didn't know I would be capable of talking about that, and after working with Dave Chappelle, I found myself in a place where I feel I could talk about it.
When you do movies or if you are an artist or a musician, you lead a life that is really interesting with the media - with television, with the creation of what you do. You sort of lose a sense of real life - which is that you do work that gives you money but you don't have this constant interaction with your art. So you have more sort of a reality in your personality and who you are that you are just more yourself basically. I'm getting a little bit complicated, but basically I realized how much I needed this type of person because you find yourself interacting with people who are interacting with the majority [of people], and their personality is constantly altered by that. So you have those who become like big-headed and talk about themselves all of the time and are super-confident and those who are more inside and they become very shy and withdrawn, but you don't have [many] people who are just simple, real people. So in Be Kind Rewind I'm going more into this world which is a reality, basically.
IGN: Professionally speaking, do you feel like you have the freedom to explore these ideas?
Gondry: To be honest, I am pretty safe in the sense that if I have an idea I want to do I will find a way to make it work financially. With the films I've done, they have always turned out to be financially in the positive. So I didn't make a movie that was a huge hit and create an empire for myself, but all of the things I've made turned out to - even my first film was not like a big hit but it had a positive financial result. I've always been more balanced so if tomorrow I do a movie that's weird or probably appeals to a small audience, I just have to make it for the money that they can recoup. But I don't [think] that I am cornered into having to do anything; I think I worked hard to be able to explore any film direction and I want to continue doing that.
Quote from: Michel Gondry
I have this project I am writing now that may happen in 90 countries
best movie of next decade (so far).
Watched this yesterday. I was constantly in awe of the visual inventivness of this film. No scene was boring in that sense. But the way the story is told turned me off. I didn't find it funny, as another guy pointed out, some of it felt like reading poetry by a 12 year old. I didn't like Gael's performance at all. He seemed to be so self conscious about being in a Michel Gondry movie. A few times he actually surpassed that self consciousness and made his dialogues felt completely real instead of just half improvised real, but I guess someone like Jim Carrey, who can get away more easily with going from completely serious to completely crazy, is better suited for this kind of imaginary universe with cartoonish tones. I kept thinking another actor might had more fun with all of this and therefore made it funnier for us.
After half an hour I kind of stopped caring. It was pretty to look at but the love story didn't do it for me. I agree the girl was perfectly cast. The humor I didn't really liked. Someone said it reminded him of Godard and I agree, I also never found his movies funny.
Overall I'm dissapointed, but I'm sure in the future Gondry will find a way to make this kind of non linear and more dreamlike oriented movie more succesfully.
'It's complexicated'
Michel Gondry, the maker of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, tells Xan Brooks about his weird dreams, why Carrey and Winslet aren't friends - and why he's finally gone solo
Source: The Guardian
I feel that I know Michel Gondry even before he steps through the door of his hotel suite. I have him pegged as ingenious and excitable, vibrant company but slightly batty; and I think all this because his new film, The Science of Sleep, is so brazenly autobiographical, and its chief protagonist so obviously an alter ego. Like Stéphane (the character played by Gael García Bernal), Gondry once held down a dead-end job at a Paris calendar publisher. Like Stéphane, he once nursed a forlorn crush on a casual female acquaintance. In real life, his love was not reciprocated. In the film, it sort of is, although during the production Gondry was not entirely certain of this and had to ask Charlotte Gainsbourg (the actor who plays the girl) for reassurance. Afterwards, he felt happy and relieved.
Like Stéphane, Gondry is also an avid fantasist. Typical artist, he claims to have developed the ability to "direct" his dreams, tweaking the sound levels and adjusting the focus. "I call it lucid dreaming," he says. "And when I have a lucid dream, I generally end up having sex with the first girl I can find." What, when he wakes up? "No, no. In the dream. Because you realise nobody is watching. So I just spend my time finding girls to have sex with." Three minutes in, the conversation has already taken a perplexing detour.
Gondry was raised in Versailles, a bourgeois Parisian suburb sandwiched between the forest and the city. In the past, he has speculated that it was this background that shaped his creative choices, defining his fascination with the blurry line that separates the world of magic from the world of men. Physically, too, Gondry cuts an exotic, storybook figure. With his wiry build, dapper dress and elfin features, he would have made a perfect Mr Tumnus, if only James McAvoy hadn't got there first.
At the age of 43, he has tried on various hats. That job at the calendar company was eventually subsumed by a more pleasurable stint banging drums in the pop band Oui Oui ("we were not very successful, but people liked us"). This in turn led to a golden age making trailblazing music videos for everyone from Björk to the Rolling Stones. The promos were his passport to features. He made Human Nature and the Oscar-winning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in tandem with the writer Charlie Kaufman. He collaborated with the comic Dave Chappelle on the eponymous Dave Chappelle's Block Party. The Science of Sleep is his first outing as both writer and director - the first one he can truly call his own.
Gondry pours some tea and explains why it took so long. At first, he lacked confidence in his own voice, he says. But when he watched his videos back-to-back, he realised his voice had actually been there all along. "It is not such a stretch moving from videos to narrative features," he says. "I always saw my videos as little stories, anyway. In one, the story is a palindrome. In one, it is a spiral." In fact, many of The Science of Sleep's ideas crop up, in embryonic form, in these promos. The giant hands that Bernal sports at one stage were first used in the Foo Fighters' Everlong video. Before that, they were a regular feature in Gondry's nocturnal ramblings. Perhaps he even had sex while wearing them.
I liked The Science of Sleep. While film lacks the pure emotional wallop of Eternal Sunshine, it remains a beguiling, sugar-frosted fantasy, utterly unlike anything else currently doing the rounds. It also boasts a lovely chemistry between Bernal and Gainsbourg as the mismatched playmates who may just become lovers.
Of course, movies have a knack of bamboozling the viewer. Previously, I had always imagined a similar connection between Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine. Off-screen, however, this turns out not to have been the case.
"Much more difficulty," Gondry says. "They were very different personalities and I think they are coming from such different backgrounds that they are having to stretch to meet. They did an amazing job, but it was a lot to ask for them to become friends."
This thorny relationship was reflected across the entire production. "We had two producers, one from New York and one from LA, so different backgrounds again. Then you had Charlie Kaufman and Jim Carrey, two strong personalities. And I was in the middle. I would talk to Jim Carrey and listen to his ideas. And I liked them, but they were -" he gestures across the room - "way over here." Like what? "Well, I remember he would go, 'Oh, maybe I'm eating a cake and my house is inside the cake.' Or, 'Maybe I suddenly lose my eye and I'm rotting and it's like a horror movie.' And I would never even dare to pass these ideas on to Charlie Kaufman. His views were very different."
Gondry insists he never feels resentful that Eternal Sunshine is generally viewed as a Kaufman film, with the director playing second fiddle. "People write these things in newspapers, so it's obvious they gravitate towards the writer," he shrugs. "Yet film is a visual language, not a written one. So when people say I can't tell a story because I'm coming from videos, it's very dismissive of what movies really are."
Talking of language, I'm fascinated by the choices made in The Science of Sleep, which veers from French to Spanish to English to a kind of backwards-looping dreamspeak. Partly this was done to accommodate Bernal, who is Mexican; partly, it is a reflection of the director's own stateless pedigree. "I moved to the UK and then to the US in 1996, and I work a lot in the English language," he explains. "So it would be difficult for me to do a purely French movie."
I ask if he sometimes dreams in English and he says he sometimes does, even though his accent is still rich and his vocabulary still occasionally scuffs its toes. He says "misleaded", for example, and "complexicated". Gondry blinks. "Yeah, yeah. I mean complicated."
Gondry tells me about his son, Paul, who is 15. Paul used to live with his mother in Paris but is now with his dad in New York. At school, Paul hangs out with the other ex-pats. When the conversation is chatty, the kids use English. When it turns more personal, they resort to French. "English is more direct, more confident," Gondry says. "I had an English girlfriend after breaking up with Paul's mother, who is French. I would never say 'I love you' in French. It is too definitive. If you say it once, that's it. It's like saying, 'I will die for you.' In England, you can say it casually."
We define ourselves by the language we speak, Gondry argues. We don't speak language; language speaks us. So when he was working in the calendar firm, he defined himself via his native tongue. And when he began shooting music videos, he shifted into English. "My professional life was developing at the same time. I became a little more confident by becoming a more successful director. I lost a little bit of my timidity. And I helped myself along by using English."
And this, surely, is the main difference between the director and his alter-ego. Where the character of Stephane is widely regarded a kooky loner, Gondry has found an outlet for his creativity. His wild inventions have been affirmed by the world at large. These days the girls must be falling at his feet.
Things have changed, admits Gondry - but only up to a point. "There was this girl recently who said that she had watched my DVD six times, and I was thinking, 'Oh, she must really like me.' So I asked her out to a screening and she said, 'It's a date.' " He shakes his head. "But she didn't mean it as a date-date. She just meant it as a date in her diary. Or maybe she did mean it as a date, but then she changed her mind."
He pauses to ponder this conundrum; this thicket of missed connections and language barriers, gaudy dreams and cold realities. Eventually he is forced to let it lie. "I wish there was an easy answer," he sighs. "It is very complexicated".
Quote from: MacGuffin on February 15, 2007, 04:58:07 PM"Much more difficulty," Gondry says. "They were very different personalities and I think they are coming from such different backgrounds that they are having to stretch to meet. They did an amazing job, but it was a lot to ask for them to become friends."
i know it's really stupid but it always bugs me when you find stuff like this out. like, two actors you like who have such great chemistry on screen but really dislike eachother off, it almost spoils the movie a little.
Quote from: Alexandro on February 14, 2007, 09:23:05 AM
Watched this yesterday. I was constantly in awe of the visual inventivness of this film. No scene was boring in that sense. But the way the story is told turned me off. I didn't find it funny, as another guy pointed out, some of it felt like reading poetry by a 12 year old. I didn't like Gael's performance at all. He seemed to be so self conscious about being in a Michel Gondry movie. A few times he actually surpassed that self consciousness and made his dialogues felt completely real instead of just half improvised real, but I guess someone like Jim Carrey, who can get away more easily with going from completely serious to completely crazy, is better suited for this kind of imaginary universe with cartoonish tones. I kept thinking another actor might had more fun with all of this and therefore made it funnier for us.
After half an hour I kind of stopped caring. It was pretty to look at but the love story didn't do it for me. I agree the girl was perfectly cast. The humor I didn't really liked. Someone said it reminded him of Godard and I agree, I also never found his movies funny.
Overall I'm dissapointed, but I'm sure in the future Gondry will find a way to make this kind of non linear and more dreamlike oriented movie more succesfully.
you forgot to bring your towel
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2Ff%2Ffb%2FTowelie.jpg&hash=ba9627c0166b234bd61f9b4fac2dbd6637c49e6b)
i did, i bring my towel to every movie...well, pretty much.
my girlfriend said she thinks the movie would've been better had she brought a towel
I agree, this felt very Godard/New Wave to me. I don't know if it's as simple as it having subtitles and some French in it, or some of the handheld camera work in location settings (or at least what seemed to be to me, though I didn't really pay close attention).
**potential spoilers**
I totally missed him lying about living far away, so I was kinda scratching my head for awhile.
I'm not sure a girl would be so forgiving about finding a guy inside her apartment uninvited in that fashion.
I'm still not sure if Stephanie really was dancing with another guy at the party (in the white dress i would have like to see more of - or would that be less actually).
The New Wave/Godard feeling about it comes in its free form of story and making professional actors look and act like standard people. The difference with Godard is that he also exhibited criticism of genres, structures and other things in his movies. The Science of Sleep exists solely for its characters.
My feelings about the film were conflicted. On one hand, I was engrossed. The way the film stripped artificial barriers between me and the story was refreshing. There wasn't a story. It was a series of personal moments that were agonizing for how honest and brutal they were. Films like this and others like A Woman Under the Influence are good reminders of the artificiality of most movies. The reason why most dramas can still be escapist entertainment is because they represent the discomfort of real life only in snippets.
Most films do not succeed on discomfort alone. I know a lot of people that do like A Woman Under the Influence, but I know many more that don't. The sugar coding to appease the audience in Science of Sleep is in the filmmaking. It is wonderfully imaginative in a way that never dulls. Even as the movie becomes tiresome with its characters, the movie is still offering new peepholes into the imagination of Gondry. I think he was hard press to edit his film because he didn't want to lose some sequences.
But the film didn't sit right with me afterwords. It was unapologetically dedicated to personal experience and the power of dreams to dig at our agonies and fears. The film became repititive with problems and situations because real life is repititive. Real life is a cluster of feelings and emotions. This film was exactly that. The dreams gave the film loose ends with what and wasn't reality, but it still kept all the emotions at the surface level. It didn't dig deeper.
Antonioni's La Notte was also a personal experience on film, but it had a filmmaker at the top of his philosophical and artistic identity. It was large work that fit into the line of other works on society without God such as ones by Ingmar Bergman. Art, no matter what the details are, should be the criticism of life. Replicating reality (or dreams) isn't the same.
With that, the Godard reference to Science of Sleep becomes important. Susan Sontag in the sixties said that Godard's films marked a new benchwork in cinema that usual critical standards could not apply to his films. His work operated on a new level of connection to the audience that was in revolt to everything done beforehand. The Science of Sleep des not have all the Godard hallmarks, but does how a daring to be limitless in its disegard for convention. This film isn't very old and I already know a lot of people that don't just love it, but believe in it like it is their bible to how storytelling should be.
That is to believe in a film to exist only in an emotional capacity. Of course I don't believe it and as much as I was engrossed by this movie, my feelings were being double checked by my brain afterwords. Now after a few days of consideration, I feel a mixed result. There is quality filmmaking and storytelling, but the film doesn't know when to stop and when to dig for more.
As for Sontag, she never backed off her defense of Godard, but she checked her beliefs against moral authority and classical standards of logic in criticizing art and finally agreed with them once some very bad stuff was being accepted.
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on May 19, 2007, 07:52:10 PM
But the film didn't sit right with me afterwords. It was unapologetically dedicated to personal experience and the power of dreams to dig at our agonies and fears. The film became repititive with problems and situations because real life is repititive. Real life is a cluster of feelings and emotions. This film was exactly that. The dreams gave the film loose ends with what and wasn't reality, but it still kept all the emotions at the surface level. It didn't dig deeper.
That seems to be one of the problems with art that is truly autobiographical. The best narratives are able to create a sense of universality through their specificity, but sometimes the specificity becomes so overwhelmingly specific that it ends up becoming a distancing mechanism, severing the audience from their identification with the characters. Not that there's any inherent problem with that approach, except that in the case of Science of Sleep, I think it creates a degree of disconnect between the artist's intention and the audience's actual response to the film. Like Gondry had all this emotional shorthand worked into the film that we, the viewers, were not privy to.
This has the most hard to understand commentary I've ever heard. First, Gondry's English is hard to understand, and then they frequently speak in other languages.
Quote from: polkablues on May 19, 2007, 10:57:41 PM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on May 19, 2007, 07:52:10 PM
But the film didn't sit right with me afterwords. It was unapologetically dedicated to personal experience and the power of dreams to dig at our agonies and fears. The film became repititive with problems and situations because real life is repititive. Real life is a cluster of feelings and emotions. This film was exactly that. The dreams gave the film loose ends with what and wasn't reality, but it still kept all the emotions at the surface level. It didn't dig deeper.
That seems to be one of the problems with art that is truly autobiographical. The best narratives are able to create a sense of universality through their specificity, but sometimes the specificity becomes so overwhelmingly specific that it ends up becoming a distancing mechanism, severing the audience from their identification with the characters. Not that there's any inherent problem with that approach, except that in the case of Science of Sleep, I think it creates a degree of disconnect between the artist's intention and the audience's actual response to the film. Like Gondry had all this emotional shorthand worked into the film that we, the viewers, were not privy to.
It's funny that with a debut like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, written by a superstar screenwriter who already had an identity, everybody could still tell a lot of the director was in the story with how the filmmaking was.
My worry after that movie is that Michel Gondry would find no end to dig at his emotional history. Science of Sleep proved that, but I don't know how he'll be able to handle it later on. I think his next project will be his attempt to mend his style to a good Jack Black vehicle (if it gets wide release) but I'm afraid he will get too repititive too quickly.
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on May 20, 2007, 12:28:59 AM
It's funny that with a debut like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, written by a superstar screenwriter
his debut was Human Nature (hence the joke in this forum's description), also by kaufman.
Quote from: Pubrick on May 20, 2007, 12:40:33 AM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on May 20, 2007, 12:28:59 AM
It's funny that with a debut like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, written by a superstar screenwriter
his debut was Human Nature (hence the joke in this forum's description), also by kaufman.
Wow, completely forgot that one.
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on May 20, 2007, 01:19:29 AM
Quote from: Pubrick on May 20, 2007, 12:40:33 AM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on May 20, 2007, 12:28:59 AM
It's funny that with a debut like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, written by a superstar screenwriter
his debut was Human Nature (hence the joke in this forum's description), also by kaufman.
Wow, completely forgot that one.
you and everybody else
except for bigideas apparently.
Quote from: bonanzataz on May 21, 2007, 10:30:08 PM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on May 20, 2007, 01:19:29 AM
Quote from: Pubrick on May 20, 2007, 12:40:33 AM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on May 20, 2007, 12:28:59 AM
It's funny that with a debut like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, written by a superstar screenwriter
his debut was Human Nature (hence the joke in this forum's description), also by kaufman.
Wow, completely forgot that one.
you and everybody else . except for bigideas apparently.
i'm not bigideas.
Quote from: Pubrick on May 22, 2007, 11:02:11 AM
Quote from: bonanzataz on May 21, 2007, 10:30:08 PM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on May 20, 2007, 01:19:29 AM
Quote from: Pubrick on May 20, 2007, 12:40:33 AM
Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on May 20, 2007, 12:28:59 AM
It's funny that with a debut like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, written by a superstar screenwriter
his debut was Human Nature (hence the joke in this forum's description), also by kaufman.
Wow, completely forgot that one.
you and everybody else . except for bigideas apparently.
i'm not bigideas.
everyone can dream though.... :yabbse-grin:
i actually do quite like Human Nature and don't understand it's dismissal (i guess no one wants to see a grown woman in full body hair?). i may or may have not written about it on this forum. probably somewhere where there are massive cobwebs and dustbunnies.
i thought your avatar was from the movie. i... i guess, i'm... wrong?
i kinda liked the movie too. it was just a LITTLE boring. it felt like anybody would produce anything by kaufman at that point so he just took out a script he had written a decade earlier and was like, eh, fuck it. there was some decent stuff in there, just nothing i'd really ever want to see again.
Quote from: bonanzataz on May 22, 2007, 05:15:52 PM
i thought your avatar was from the movie. i... i guess, i'm... wrong?
oh, you're right! i forgot. i got rid of the Eisley one and brought back an old one.
here's a SoS related tidbit:
in SoS, a character's feet are in a fridge
and in Gondry's Knives Out video, Thom Yorke's feet are in an oven.
:ponder:
Quote from: bigideas on May 22, 2007, 10:16:12 PM
in SoS, a character's feet are in a fridge
and in Gondry's Knives Out video, Thom Yorke's feet are in an oven.
:ponder:
oh fuck.... he's turning into quentin...