The Magic of Michel Gondry
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
It’s impossible to deny that Michel Gondry is a visionary of an auteur. Even when I don’t like a work of his, there is just so much imagination placed into each project that I can never outright hate anything that he makes. Part of this creativity comes from the people he chooses to work with, including one Charlie Kaufman; this duo crafted a little film called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Still, no matter who Gondry collaborates with, his capabilities feel endless, and he is often the root source of his films’ most fascinating triumphs. He possesses what feels like a childlike wonder, but he also has the technical finesse to pull off exactly what visions he has this time around. What’s important is the well known source of his love for film, and it of course stems from his youth. When kids may have watched an action film like The Terminator or an adventure epic like The Great Escape and found their love of where film can lead them, Gondry has always been wowed by Le Voyage en ballon by Albert Lamorisse: a journey in a hot air balloon by a child.
I feel like there is an additional fascination with the deconstruction of the filmmaking process that gets Gondry going, especially with his many uses of ingenious practical effects, and surreal CGI. There are also murky, dreamlike hazes that cloak the cinematography of his film, and performers that possess a specific whimsy in almost every work. Every effort has been the chasing of this persistent goal Gondry has had to achieve what Le Voyage en ballon pulls off: the realization of young daydreams through the technological means of cinema. Of course, there is one other important factor that has shaped his feature films: his domination within music videos. It’s no secret that Gondry is one of the greatest music video directors of all time, and it’s because he brings a brilliant idea to each and every song. “Let Forever Be” by The Chemical Brothers becomes a ‘90s fractal whirlwind. Radiohead’s “Knives Out” becomes a looping nightmare where elements amalgamate, and turn a story and setting into an unholy vision. Then, there are Gondry’s more iconic works, like “Fell in Love with a Girl”, where he works with a White Stripes song — that’s less than two minutes long — and churns out a Lego-built wonder world that still feels astonishing today.
Michel Gondry has made a large amount of the best music videos of all time.
In these short timeframes, Gondry was tested with what stories he could tell not narratively, but rather metaphysically. Something more obvious like Kylie Minogue’s “Come into my World” has the Australian songstress walking through a city block with various events going on around her, including a furious breakup and people working. The video loops but Kylie and these people remain, and everyone gets cloned each time the video loops. We end up seeing different sides of each story, as there are around five Kylies and five versions of each participant. However, we get stories of each character here. In “Around the World”, Daft Punk’s music is represented by a handful of mysterious mascots, with each melody, beat, and sound being carried by the movements and actions of these participants. What’s the story here? There doesn’t need to be one. The concept alone is perfect. In works like “Around the World”, Gondry worked on breaking what music videos could be.
This mentality migrated over into his motion pictures, and it has worked for better or for worse. In his homage to film Be Kind, Rewind, Gondry allows his subjects to make films in the film that he himself has made; why should he be the only person qualified to make motion pictures? The premise is a video rental service where the video cassettes in a rental store all get wiped out, and the two main clerks “swede” every single movie (basically, they film themselves recreating each feature, with no budget, as best as they can from memory). Whether you like the film or not, the heart for cinema is right there in the forefront. Even a dud like The Green Hornet comes from a good place; as much of a headache as the film is, it’s really something to see Gondry try to capture the essence of a living comic book.
Each Gondry project is full of creative innovations.
Oftentimes, I find Gondry likes to take the scripts and ideas of others and see where he can go with them. This includes the television show Kidding, created by Dave Holstein, where Gondry could run away with the premise of a child entertainer experiencing a mental breakdown (you can only imagine the clashing between a kids show and existential turmoil if you haven’t seen the show). Otherwise, Gondry is more than happy fully realizing his own concepts; Mood Indigo is an example where Gondry had a say in all major departments. Regardless of his amount of input, you can feel when something is even partially worked on by Michel Gondry, because he manages to bring cinema back to its original state of how we perceive it as children. Even when he deals with mature themes, I feel like a kid again when I watch anything Gondry makes, as if he was able to bring my playtime with my toys back to life, place it on the big screen, and make it accessible for all to understand. It takes a special skill to not be able to lose that part of one’s self, but Gondry is one of the finest examples you can find in film today; he subsequently allows each of us to rediscover the children in us every time we watch a project of his, from two minutes to two seasons in length.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.