My Favorite Michel Gondry Film

Michel Gondry has been one of my favorite directors for a long time, and as we've been weathering a new wave of nostalgia for movies from the early 2000s, it struck me that this was the right time to be writing this post.  Gondry comes from a long tradition of French fantasists, and made a name for himself in the '90s through his surrealist music videos for Bjork, Daft Punk, and the White Stripes, among others.  His work often has an experimental feel, as he frequently pulls off whimsical ideas and wild transitions through low-tech solutions.  When he moved into features, he doubled down on this approach, favoring DIY aesthetics to express fantastical concepts.

He got off to a great start, collaborating on two features with Charlie Kaufman, before Kaufman would go off and direct his own scripts.  The second of these, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," remains a highlight of both of their filmographies.  It reportedly had a rough conception and production.  Gondry insisted on shooting nearly everything on location, and ran into trouble implementing some of his complicated, in-camera effects work.  The house being washed away by the incoming tide was all done practically, and involved putting a physical set in the ocean.  A scene with multiple versions of the main character was accomplished by literally having Jim Carrey run around to different parts of the set while the camera was pointed elsewhere.  To avoid artifice, the soundtrack even uses mostly diegetic sound.  

The result of all this effort is a high-concept, science-fiction film that is simultaneously a madcap flight of fancy and one of the most heartbreaking, intimate romantic dramas of the last twenty years.  The hero, Joel, travels through and revisits his memories of his relationship with his girlfriend Clementine, while those memories are being degraded and erased from his mind by unscrupulous scientists.  Some of his encounters with Clementine are farcical.  Others are horrific.  Most are terribly sad.  However, the whole journey is permeated with an atmosphere of nostalgic warmth and intense, bittersweet longing.  The Kaufman script and the performances of Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as Joel and Clementine, do so much to ground the film in an accessible emotional reality, despite all the Gondryian madness around them.  

And the madness is certainly a big appeal of the film.  We watch Joel's memories warp and collide, and watch him try to fight back by regressing or hiding in different parts of his mind.  As the memories disappear, the physical worlds in his head are destroyed as though beset by physical apocalypses.  People and objects blink out of existence, or disappear into darkness.  Other removals are more violent.  Joel transforms into different versions of himself and tries to reorder his universe to hold on to cherished experiences and encounters.  It's very messy and very tactile, creating these beautiful images of destruction and loss.  It can be confusing to parse exactly when or where something is happening, except we're always kept aware that on a fundamental level, this is all in Joel's head. 

Reading about some of the struggles to get the film made have highlighted how important the collaborative nature of the project was to its ultimate success.  Gondry and Kaufman are both these outsized creative talents who sometimes have trouble reigning in their bad habits.  Their work has sometimes suffered as a result.  On "Eternal Sunshine," circumstances forced them to compromise their visions in many respects.  Gondry couldn't entirely avoid the use of CGI or artificial lighting.  Kaufman's script lost whole characters, and the original ending.  This sense of restraint extended to the cast - Jim Carrey is the most subdued I've ever seen him onscreen.    

But as a result, the film endures.  It's gained a cult following and a reputation for being one of the iconic breakup films of its time.  I've remained a fan of Gondry and Kaufman's subsequent work, but nothing they've made in the years since "Eternal Sunshine" has ever quite managed to capture the same poignancy and sense of wonder.  Not even "Synecdoche, New York," Kaufman's masterpiece, manages to make me feel for its characters as deeply as I do for Joel and Clementine.  And I suspect that lasting affection owes a great deal to Michel Gondry.  

What I've Seen - Michel Gondry

Human Nature (2001)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Dave Chappelle's Block Party (2005)
The Science of Sleep (2006)
Be Kind Rewind (2008)
The Green Hornet (2011)
The We and the I (2012)
Mood Indigo (2013)
Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? (2013)
Microbe & Gasoline (2015)

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