La Science de Michel Gondry online scholarship on his films videos

Last updated April 19, 2010

Electric Dreams? Above and below, images from Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008)

 

Michel Gondry and Robert Stickgold discuss dreams, filmmaking and the scientific method (SeedMagazine.com, 2007).

Film Studies For Free presents un petit hommage -- en images, hypertexte, et vidéos --to one of its favourite filmmakers, Michel Gondry, French maestro of the music-video form, and also responsible, as director, for the audiovisual brilliance of the following films: Human Nature (2001); Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004); La Science des rêves/The Science of Sleep (2006); Be Kind Rewind (2008); and The Green Hornet (2010).

There are some truly wonderful scholarly resources linked to below: merci bien, as ever, to their authors, editors and publishers for making them freely accessible online.

• Dwayne Avery, The Future is behind you: the Reclamation of Place in Be Kind Rewind, Movement 1.1: the futures of cinema, 2009 
• Jim Batcho, Overlapping Levels of the Diegesis in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Offscreen Journal, Vol. 11, Nos. 8-9, Aug/Sept 2007
• New Julia Driver, Memory, Desire, and Value in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in Christopher Grau (ed), Philosophers on Film: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Routledge, 2009)
• New Michel Gondry, Foreword, in Christopher Grau (ed), Philosophers on Film: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Routledge, 2009)
• New Christopher Grau, Introduction to Philosophers on Film: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Routledge, 2009)
• New Christopher Grau, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the morality of memory,  Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64 (1), Winter 2006
• Carolyn Jess-Cooke, Narrative and Mediatized Memory in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Scope, Issue 8, June 2007
• Brandon M. Hancock, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 9, No. 1 April 2005
• Erin Hill-Parks, From Film to Life: The Construction of Identity in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I “Heart” Huckabees, From Camera Lens To Critical Lens A Collection Of Best Essays On Film Adaptation, edited by Rebecca Housel (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006) 
• Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - screenplay, 2003
• John Finlay Kerr, ‘Rereading’ Be Kind Rewind (USA 2008): How film history can be remapped through the social memories of popular culture, Screening the Past, Issue 24, 2009
• Mike Lim, Review of Garrett Stewart, Framed Time: Toward a Postfilmic Cinema. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007, Screening the Past, Issue 23, 2008
• Colm OShea, Out of His Head: Metaphysical Escape Attempts in the Screenplays of Charlie Kaufman , Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 63, February 2009 
• Heidi Peeters , The semiotics of music videos: it must be written in the stars, Image [and] Narrative, Issue 8, May 2004
• A Raz, and M Paasivirta, The Science and Fiction of Memory Removal, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol 50(42), 2005
• Richard Rushton, Cinema After Deleuze After 9/11, Postmodern Culture, Volume 19, No. 2, 2009 
• Fredericka Shulman, The Objects of Memory: Collecting Eternal Sunshine, Philament, Issue 5, 2005
• Jason Sperb, Be Kind Rewind / or, an incomplete essay on Off-Modern American Cinephilia, Jamais Vu, December 13, 2009
• Gunnar Strøm, The Two Golden Ages  of Animated Music Video, Animation Studies, Vol.2, 2007
• Dayton Taylor and Hector Macleod, Digital Air Techniques (2008)
• Scott Thrill, "How My Brain Works": An Interview with Michel Gondry, Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 53, August 2006
• José van Dijck, Memory Matters in the Digital Age, Configurations, Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2004
• Thomas E. Wartenberg, Film as Argument, Film Studies, Issue 8, Summer 2006

Matt Zoller Seitz shares his thoughts with fellow filmmaker critic Kevin B Lee while rewatching Michel Gondrys 

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, May 2009

 

 The original music video of Gary Jules and Michael Andrews cover version of Tears for Fears song Mad World, directed by Michel Gondry. This song features in the soundtrack of Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001)

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◙ Top 10 Science Fiction movies – part II ◙

5. Children Of Men (2006)

"Children of Men" is a futuristic science fiction movie starring Clive Owen as Theo Faron. In the not-too-distant future, the world has become a scary place. Most civilized societies have collapsed, and only Great Britain maintains some semblance of the modern world. Women have been become sterile, and no babies have been born for many years. The setting of the movie depicts a world fraught with xenophobia and socio-economic and geo-political strife. Theo Faron encounters a pregnant woman, Kee, and does his best to protect this hope for mankind.

IMDB

4. 12 Monkeys (1995)

Official Trailer [Embedding disabled]

A fantastic view of a bleak future created by the outbreak of a virus in the year 1996 and an attempt made to discover a solution by returning to the time of the outbreak. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is forced to travel back in time to periods between 1990-96 to try and discover who or what was responsible for the outbreak, all the while being monitored from the future by scientists and administrators. Cole is unsurprisingly considered to be crazy in 1990 and is sent to a mental institute where he meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), whom he comes to believe is the culprit of the outbreak of the virus. Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stow) becomes interested in Cole because of her research about doomsdayers, one of which Cole becomes because of his talk of the outbreak of a deadly virus. Together with Railly, Cole attempts to unravel the mystery that is the past of the 12 Monkeys.

IMDB

3. The Man from earth (2007)

“The Man from Earth” sees Professor John Oldman (David Lee Smith), a retiring college scholar admit an incredible secret to his closet friends. His friends throw him an impromptu goodbye party that throws him off, as he wasn’t expecting it. After spending some time with his friends and colleagues who have come to see him off, John reveals that he is immortal. This of course stops the room short of anything else as John begins to explain he’s walked the earth for 14,000 years. John then begins to tell his long-winded tale of how he survived centuries of evolution from the Cro-Magnon Era to the present.

IMDB

2. The  Prestige (2006)

The Prestige is a movie about two magicians, Rupert ‘Robbie’Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), who rise to the top of their game together from lowly beginnings while constantly pitting themselves against one another. Their feud grows to an obsession to outperform the other with new and more dangerous tricks while trying to sabotage the other’s performance. As their hatred for one another grows, each becomes more willing to risk death and worse to be considered the foremost magician in the world, and their bitter hatred for one another soon spirals out of control. What will each be willing to risk to pull off the ultimate trick, the one that will forever enshrine them as the greatest magician to have ever lived?

IMDB

1. The Matrix (1999)

What happens if you discover that everything in your own life were a fiction? Neo discovers one day that all he had in his life is a reflection. Neo wants to learn the reality and he ends up with the fact that his and lives of many are controlled by a computer system. Neo meets Rebellions like Morpheus and Trinity who have discovered the fact earlier and now living in the reality and fighting against the computer system called “Matrix” to save human race. The computer system uses Agents to fight against Rebel Warriors. Neo understands that he is not living a life in year 1999 and the actual time is 200 years ahead. The matrix created a false understanding of the time and environment to keep people sleeping since the actual world was devastated after the war against computer controlled machines and the computer system need energy to survive. In order to get energy, computers make humans sleep and use them in human farms where billions of people are living in a dream and their body energy is used by computers to provide the energy needed. Morpheus and Trinity believe that Neo is the one who will overthrow the computers and reclaim the world back.

IMDB

Extra: Cypher (2002)

Morgan Sullivan (Jeremy Northam) is a bored accountant who dreams of more excitement in his career. He seizes the opportunity to become a corporate spy for Digicorp. His task is to gather as much information and proposed business plans from his company’s rivals. During one of his missions after a trade convention he meets Rita (Lucy Liu) who works for his company’s competitor Sunways. Rita convinces Morgan that working for Digicorp may not be in his best interests and persuades him to work for her company as a double agent. Morgan reluctantly agrees but it is not a long before his high pressure role becomes too much for him and he fears for his sanity. He is offered help by Rita’s boss but only if he agrees to one last mission.

IMDB

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