Moriarty Examines THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP!!

Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. With ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, Michel Gondry stepped up and made a classic, a film that I am confident will be watched and studied and debated for decades to come. I know many people who want to heap the lions share of the credit for that film on Charlie Kaufman, and certainly, the films he writes bear certain similarities to each other from film to film. But Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry and George Clooney aren’t remotely the same sort of filmmakers, with the same sort of voice. Look at the way BEING JOHN MALKOVICH plays versus the way ETERNAL SUNSHINE plays versus the way CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND plays. CONFESSIONS is dark. Plain and simple. It’s dark and it’s charismatic and it’s ugly. And it really doesn’t give you something to hold onto in the end, either. There’s no redemption for Chuck. MALKOVICH is sweet and funny until the point where it isn’t, at which point it becomes completely black and terrifying. I think it’s got the saddest ending since SE7EN or BREAKING THE WAVES. ETERNAL SUNSHINE is about hope. It’s about possibility. It’s about rebirth. Starting over. It’s about the chance, however small, that there’s something good tomorrow. Of all the of the films made from Kaufman’s scripts so far, ETERNAL SUNSHINE is the one that allows for something that resembles a happy ending. And part of that is because of Kaufman, but part is because of how it’s shot. It’s because of the choices those guys make. And the clearest way to determine what that voice is that the director brings to Kaufman’s work, we have to see the director do something away from Kaufman. With Gondry, he’s finally made the leap from director to writer/director, something that Kaufman’s doing in the other direction next year. It’s exciting, just because Gondry’s such a visual wizard. Even if he ends up making something slick and empty, chances are it’ll be exciting to see. The good news here is that Gondry is obviously a gifted and important film artist, one we’ll be watching for a while. The even better news is that he’s got soul. There are a lot of talented guys who don’t. I won’t make a list of them because I don’t want them to cry. But it’s true. The filmmakers with real soul are the guys I think matter. The guys who are slipping the art right through the system. Gondry earned his place at the table, and instead of shooting some comic-book adaptation or some sequel to a children’s franchise or a video-game-tie-in, he’s using his juice to make a film like THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP. It’s beautiful. That’s the best word for it. It’s lush and it’s sweet and it’s got a big heart and a bigger head, and there’s really no other film that’s made me feel this... blanketed... all year. Like you slip into this film and just let it carry you along. Lots of people shoot dream scenes for movies. It’s one of the oldest clichés in the book. There’s very little that hasn’t been tried in the service of showing dreams on film. One of my favorite films of all time is Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL, in which dreams play a crucial role. David Lynch’s films are often described in terms of dream logic. The biggest groaner twist ending you can pull on your audience is having a character wake up and realize, “Oh, no, it’s all a dream!” So basing your entire film on the main character’s dream life is a risky move. Again, if you look at BRAZIL, the entire film is about Sam Lowry’s struggle to decide if his real life will ever be able to live up to his dream life, and if it’s worth it to bother with both. The dreams in that film are all like jigsaw puzzle pieces that reveal more and more about Sam Lowry’s inner life. About who he is. Who he wants to be. It’s smart, well-written, and utterly calculated. As most dreams on film are. Our dream lives in movies are very orderly, overtly Freudian in many cases, and for the most part very narratively-based. That’s not the way I dream in real life, though. My dreams are fucking bizarre. Images. Impressions. Random flashes of things. Any narrative that happens is constantly collapsing and changing anyway. My dreams are nothing like the dreams we see in movies. But THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP comes pretty close. Gondry’s built his entire film to feel like a dream, from beginning to end, and it reveals in him a remarkable decency and innocence that is rare in guys as accomplished as this. You can’t help but assume that Gael Garcia Bernal is playing a version of Gondry, just as Woody Allen frequently has people playing him in his films now. Bernal plays Stephane, a young man who is returning to Paris to live with his mother. He’s been living in Mexico with his father, but now that he’s dead, he finds himself adrft. He’s a bit of a screw-up, explaining at one point that he has a hard time keeping his waking life and his dream life separate. His mother (played by the always-charming Miou-Miou) isn’t home when he shows up, so he’s got the place to himself for a few weeks. She’s found him a job that she tells him is “artistic,” but when he goes for his first day, he learns that it’s basically assembly line work in the art department of a calendar company. Crushingly dull work, especially for someone like Stephane, who would rather spend his days indulging that wild creative spirit of his. When he meets the girl who lives across the hall from his mother and learns that her name is Stephanie, he finds himself roped into one of the strangest and loveliest film romances of recent memory. Instead of trying to explain the specifics of how Gondry’s story unfolds (a futile effort, since this is not a case of the narrative driving things), it’s easier to focus on how he tells that story. There’s a charmingly low-tech approach to things, with Gondry reaching deep into his bag of tricks to bring Stephane’s visions to life. There’s a little stop-motion, some optical tricks, but a startling amount of the movie was accomplished in-camera. In an age where you can order just about anything you want from one of the various CGI houses, seemingly at the punch of a button, it’s lovely to see someone release a film that feels this hand-made, this organic. It feels like there’s room for accidents and magic in the way Gondry puts these images together. And I love that the dreams aren’t all just excuses for more exposition dressed up with some “weird” imagery. Gondry isn’t afraid to digress and follow his impulses in some strange directions. As a result, there’s a place in the middle of act two where it feels like the narrative unravels almost completely. It makes perfect sense in the context of the film, though, because it’s right around the time that Stephane loses track of what is or isn’t happening to him. How you feel about Stephane will depend largely upon how charming you find him. He’s so childlike that he’s practically helpless, drifting in and out of reality to a dangerous degree. He begins to imagine pieces of his relationship with Stephanie, so when he sees her for real, he acts in inappropriate ways, and it’s up to her to sort of piece together what he thinks happened. There’s a magical moment late in the film with the two of them sharing a late night phone call... it’s a perfect little slice of any relationship, a snapshot of that switch from one level of intimacy to the next. It’s the best phone call in a film since THE VIRGIN SUICIDES. I like the way Bernal plays Stephane. I think he plays him vulnerable and sad and genuinely lonely. He’s no good with people. It’s easier to dream a friendship than it is to actually have one, evidently, and easier to fix whatever goes wrong. Gondry has a sense of whimsy, which can be a real turn-off for some audiences, but it’s so heartfelt, so genuine, that I think it really plays. And when the film reaches its conclusion, it’s a sledgehammer wrapped in a down pillow, a subtle beat that carries huge implications. It’s thrilling, and I give Gondry credit for sticking the landing. Because of this, I’m totally up for BE KIND, REWIND. If you didn’t read Quint’s interview with Gondry, you should. One note, though. Evidently, the script has continued to evolve since Gondry talked to Quint, and BACK TO THE FUTURE no longer plays any role in the film. Instead, it sounds like GHOSTBUSTERS is the film that took its place. They’re evidently two weeks into the film at this point, and cooking along. I like that Gondry is working fast, making films, not vanishing for five years after each time at bat. He’s got two films in theaters already this year, and he’s going to finish shooting a third before the year’s over. Impressive, especially when it’s as good as SCIENCE OF SLEEP. I’ll have my JACKASS 2 review in a few hours, along with a few other stories for the front page. Until then… “Moriarty” out.