[Spoilers. Consider yourself warned.]
I've been thinking a lot about Michel Gondry's La Science des rêves -- The Science of Sleep -- today. I guess it's been about three weeks since I saw it and I'm finding I want to see it again. Reading A. O. Scott's review for the New York Times for a second time, only after having viewed the film, I realize I agree with him exactly. Pretty much. Okay, almost.
Like Scott I left the theater a little "blue" it had to end, but I did not wish that it had amounted to more because the film resolved itself apropos of the only consistent, underlying thread of the whole narrative, something Scott himself explains earlier in the review: "Love is too bound up with memories, fantasies, projections and misperceptions to conform to a conventional, linear structure."
I identify quite a bit with the Gael García Bernal's "Stéphane" in everything if not his anxieties ballooning in such a manner as to hint the approach of a more serious psychological disorder. There is a scene in which Stéphane's friends and family are gathered to celebrate the publishing of his paintings in a 12-month calendar. (Calendars being perhaps the only true linear representation of time in the whole film.) Though it's not clear whether the entire scene is a dream, there is certainly one obvious moment when Stéphane's childlike irrationality is triggered unconsciously by Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg): they are holding hands and she pulls away. As he proceeds to drink -- using the bar tap as his personal drinking fountain in a sad display of his inability to control himself -- he watches, heartbroken, as Stéphanie dances with two other men, giving everyone else at the party attention except him.
By this point in the film, I had been led to believe Stéphanie and Stéphane had established a romantic relationship in addition to their respective curiosity about the other and their friendly dioramas, mind readers and time machines. As Stéphane's fantasies begin to degrade with the harsher hue of
reality, however, it becomes unclear how much of a relationship he has cultivated with Stéphanie and how much of it he has only imagined. While I have certainly found myself overcome with feelings of insecurity both with respect to myself and to myself in romantic relationships, I fortunately have a slightly better grip on reality than our friend Stéphane. He is almost indignant about staying in a very childish, emotional space suspended between his dreams and his waking life.
That the majority of all this is illustrated by means of stop-motion creatures and interjections is perfect. Even at it's most impossible and cartoonish moments, it's perhaps the most surrealistically exact a film could possibly get. Scott thinks it's the most "authentic a slice of life as [he's] encountered on screen in quite some time". Life can be portrayed in a myriad of cinematic expressions, but this feels right in that our everyday lives have no narrative to them; it is written as we go. In this way, Gondry has presented us with a slice of Stéphane's life as he lived it, preserved just so.
I started thinking about The Science of Sleep today also because I was thinking about how amazing stop-motion is, and particularly how it's been utilized in films like SoS, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and a film I only this past week saw for the first time, Eraserhead. I could spend months thinking about how much Eraserhead disturbed me (note to self: do not watch anything created by David Lynch when feeling melancholy), which is not to say I did not like/appreciate it, but I'm concentrating on stop-motion here.
So, all of *that* reminded me of a fantastic video I first saw a few months ago, "Leaf House" by Animal Collective. Click the image to visit the video over on YouTube, or better yet, watch the ~ 70MB file in your web browser.
As their bio describes, Animal Collective has at best "deliciously skewed songs, heartbreaking hooks and deep pop sensibilities". They can otherwise be scattered, cacophonous, weird, haunting -- and I love it. I've sort of been inundating myself with them today, listening to Sung Tongs, Feels, Prospect Hummer and the Grass EP repeatedly. They have provided the perfect soundtrack for thinking about dreams, love and The Science of Sleep. Both the audio track and the video of "Leaf House" are representative of the kinds of disconnect literally between the video itself and Gondry's film, and also between its imaginative representation of toys, marriage, love, expectation, destruction and, well, kitties.
There's no one to say "meow".
What?!
Exactly.
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