Be Kind Rewind (2008)

Making movies is one of our society’s real, tangible magics (assuming magic can be real and tangible and still be magic-that might actually completely contradict the definition of the word). For that, everyone, regardless of their level of devotion to the medium, is incapable of not participating in a movie if given the chance. To be in a movie, whether it’s an MGM musical or a handmade backyard epic; is to draw for a golden straw. Be Kind Rewind (taking off, I assume, from the true story of several children who spent their formative years remaking Raiders of the Lost Ark shot for shot; it was released in some theatres as Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation) is a tribute to our need for something otherworldly, and undeniably ours, as we face a society that continues to sink deeper into cooperate-sanctioned-group-fuck. Be Kind Rewind is, yes, a tribute to the imagination, a genre that has a habit of being the least imaginative on the block.

The picture was written and directed by Michel Gondry, of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep and many startling music videos. Your reaction to Gondry’s name is a fair indicator of how far you’ll buy into Be Kind Rewind. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was a powerful pop-existential-sci-fi head trip, in part because it wedded Gondry’s inventive, playful, sometimes downright ghostly imagery to something that was authentically wounded and real-the picture was screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s working out of his intellectualized-book-movie-television-influenced view of the battle of the sexes. If two people can’t ever, truly, penetrate one other, give themselves over to one another, trust one another, then how are we not doomed to loneliness? The answer, poignantly, was to drop all pretenses and fencing and scoop those messy tingly things up and hug them and go running down the beach screaming full-tilt like a lunatic. Live; as opposed to cowardly rationalizing your pleasure away. This sounds like “seize the day” treacle, and it easily could have been, but Kaufman’s exploration was moving and human, in part, because he doesn’t play the part of lecturer or even the part of the “great artist”; he’s not hovering above it all, he’s right there in the bar with a drink with the rest of us. (It’s a young Woody Allen-sci-fi movie.)

I go on about Kaufman because, without Kaufman, Gondry is a bit of a problem. Watching The Science of Sleep (and portions of Be Kind Rewind) is akin to being trapped in one of Jim Carrey’s more nightmarish childhood episodes in Eternal. Trapped is most certainly the word. Gondry’s visuals can be wizardly, and they’ve been celebrated as so, but can we also admit that the effects also have a habit of being suffocating and ugly: all self-conscious whimsy with little in the way of human current? Gondry is a clever, intelligent man, and he most likely recognizes his shortcomings as a writer-because he builds those handicaps into his stories. Science of Sleep and Be Kind Rewind are supposed to be chaotic and amateurish and insufferable! It’s empathy you see.

I just about hated Science of Sleep, primarily because I couldn’t forgive that one, final, dash of kinda reality (it’s really hypocrisy). The ending is a bit like watching a Skinamax movie that suddenly, just as you’re getting to the reason you’ve suffered through the “exposition”, blacks out and morphs into one those sermons they televise on Sunday mornings. I can tell what some of you are thinking: that Science of Sleep’s ending was “uncompromising”. It’s also a cheat. The picture builds and builds towards a great bursting leap of imagination, a romance amongst the construction papered stars, only to reveal the lead to be even more of a self-absorbed, fanatical prick than we suspected. The ending is effective, but it’s also canned, cruel emotion; and the picture preceding that ending isn’t strong enough to support it.

Be Kind Rewind doesn’t cheat us like that-this one is more amiable and plays fair-it’s a mildly better movie that’s much more enjoyable. The picture has its neat, homemade effects, and it has some very likable actors clowning around and that’s about it. The first act is a chore: the cast talks over one another in an effort to establish a screwball tone that never gels, and instead achieves a mild incoherence. Then Jack Black gets magnetized (in a funny bit) and erases all the videotapes of a small mom-and-pop video store in the process, which sends him and video clerk Mos Def scurrying to replace the tapes before the owner, played by Danny Glover, returns.

Unable to replace the tapes (no one, with the exception of the store’s three or four customers, uses them anymore) Mos Def and Jack Black go about remaking the pictures using whatever they have at their disposal. These moments of recreation (or “sweding”), which include Robocop, Ghostbusters, and Driving Miss Daisy, are dizzy and magical; tapping right in, gracefully; to that sense of giddy-play we felt when we first fell for the movies. Be Kind Rewind, in general, has a sense of folksy-silent-1980s movie camaraderie that’s bullshit (it reminded me a little of Spielberg’s Twilight Zone: The Movie segment) but comforting. Gondry (thankfully) ultimately doesn’t have Spielberg’s 1980s heavy-hand here though; his legitimate enchantment with the in-camera effects and gadgets dries that out. Gondry’s inability to stick with a story bails him out too; he’s too preoccupied to get too bogged down in the mechanics of the clichés he’s reveling in. A Ghostbusters alum turns up late inning to halt the homemade movies (which are becoming profitable) and, sighing, I thought, “Oh no, this thing’s going to court.” It doesn’t, because Gondry doesn’t care anymore about that than you do.

You should probably see the picture once. Beyond the sporadic movie scenes, there is also the charming cast. Jack Black and Mos Def are an able team, and not nearly as sentimental as you may be expecting (racial tension is acknowledged). Def and Black have a sing-song give and take, the cool and collected versus the deranged id, they click-it feels right. Melonie Diaz, as a laundry girl the guys recruit, is spunky and sexy, with an off-kilter looniness that’s unforced-this is the girl you wish for in expensive fascist romances. She has a scene with Def, that I won’t ruin, that suggests the flakey-romance we hoped for in Science of Sleep. Mia Farrow also appears in a few scenes (she looks terrific) and reminds us of The Purple Rose of Cairo, which could have very well been another of Gondry’s influences here. Farrow’s voice has gotten even softer and slyer (or maybe I just miss her) and her largely long absence from the movies (she was scarier in The Omen remake than the movie deserved) is a far more effective reminder of the movies’ increasing calculated plasticity than Gondry’s more overt protests. Danny Glover functions as a similarly stirring found object here, though I didn’t much care for his stacked-deck past musician subplot.

Be Kind Rewind is one of those mixed-frustrating pictures that, perhaps unintentionally (though I’m not sure), inspires a guilt-trip. Everything about the picture’s theme is inarguable (maybe too inarguable) so, as a movie fan, you’re going to feel a little hesitant about not enjoying it more. The 1980s kid-movie nostalgia. The anti-cooperate fill in the blank. The love of creation. We’re all in favor of all of those things. But Gondry appears to be conflicted-and insecure. Gondry trusted his inventions too much in Science of Sleep; he doesn’t trust them enough in Be Kind Rewind. This new picture is shapeless and sloppy, sort of boring, it’s a restless unwieldy thing that has little to do in between the movie-making set pieces, so why not devote the film to those set pieces? They illustrate Gondry’s tribute, his point. The rest is just the filler that Def and Black would immediately scrap upon remaking.

★★½

Posted on June 26th, 2008 in Reviews, Comedy, 2008 |

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