You have the most fascinating dreams. Unique, vibrant and random, they clearly reveal your artfulness and intelligenceâthat is, until you try to tell someone about them. Somehow when you get to that part about the bear and your 6th-grade math teacher on the roller coaster, your listener doesnât find it half as profound as youâre sure it must be.
âTo translate a dream in a really striking way, you donât give a strict interpretation,â explains Michel Gondry, the director known best for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, his Oscar-winning collaboration with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. âYou want to keep some of that abstraction and you want to convey the emotional effect. If you just recount all the details, itâs boring and it just interests you.â
But if thereâs anyone whose dreams would be endlessly fascinating in the retelling it would probably be Gondry, who not only visually conjured Kaufmanâs heady, sumptuous exploration of love, loss and memory in Eternal Sunshine, but created groundbreaking music videos like Björkâs âHuman Behaviour,â the Foo Fightersâ âEverlongâ and The White Stripes as LEGOs in âFell in Love With a Girl.â Heâs also the first director to use âmorphingâ in a music video, and heâs the technical innovator behind filmmaking landmarks like the method of shooting several still cameras in an array to create the illusion of someone hanging frozen in air, as seen in Björkâs âArmy of Meâ video. (Later this technique was used to stunning effect in The Matrix.)
In The Science of Sleep, the first feature he both wrote and directed, Gondry applies this visionary invention to his longtime fascination with dreams, using plenty of his own subconscious adventures in the process. The story follows the days and (more often) nights of StĂ©phane Miroux (Gael GarcĂa Bernal), a twentysomething artist who moves to his motherâs native France after his fatherâs death in Mexico. When he starts work at a dreary job and meets an intriguing neighbor coincidentally named StĂ©phanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg), his dreams begin wreaking havoc on his waking life, and the line between whatâs real and whatâs a blip in his nocturnal synapses starts to blur just as much for the audience as it does for StĂ©phane.
To say the dreamscapes here are fantastical is an understatement; StĂ©phaneâs sleeping world involves, for starters: a talk-show set (for âStĂ©phane TVâ) made of cardboard and egg cartons, machines that take insect form, cities paved with LPs, and a rock band consisting of his coworkers dressed in cat costumes. Itâs up to us to guess which of these Gondry dreamed up while sleeping, and which he invented on the page.
âIâve always been interested in the dream process,â he says, explaining that, even as a child, he tried to make real-world connections with people while in a lucid-dream stateâfor example, saying something to a family member in a dream and hoping theyâd repeat it to him when they were both fully awake. âThat was the starting point for the story, connecting [with people] in dreams, but not being able to connect in real life.â
Gondry decided to take that need for connection (referred to, by StĂ©phane, as âParallel Synchronized Randomnessâ) and add the possibly budding romance between StĂ©phane and StĂ©phanie, both creative but introverted people who have problems enough communicating without Stephaneâs increasingly shaky hold on reality. To make things worse, Spanish-speaking StĂ©phaneâs lack of skill in French forces the two to have limited, often bizarre conversations in Englishâa screenplay quirk Gondry fully intended. âYou use a different part of your brain,â when you have to speak with someone in your non-native language, he says. âIt can give you some freedom to interact with people and ⊠you might feel less self-conscious about what youâre saying.â On the other hand, he adds, it can also lead to awkward misunderstandings and the feelingâthat StĂ©phane hasâof being an outsider.
Gondry, a Frenchman, has experienced this in the U.S., adding a personal touch to the story. But thereâs actually little in the film that doesnât seem personal. Among much else, StĂ©phaneâs apartment is in a building in Paris where Gondry once lived, and the office where StĂ©phane works is a piece-by-piece reconstructionâdown to the wall hangings and typesetting equipmentâof an office Gondry worked in more than 20 years ago. These details provided a sense of familiarity for the director as he took on the challenge of both writing and directing a film, something that was frightening, âespecially after having directed scripts by Charlie Kaufman,â he says. âIt was very scary, but ⊠I guess Iâm going to be scared no matter what, so I might as well be scared doing something I havenât done before.â
Still, heâs thankful to have worked with the âbrilliant and originalâ Kaufman and says itâs helped his own writing. âI cannot compare,â he laughs, âbut I try my best.â It turns out Gondry greatly enjoyed being forced to clearly express himself and to âlearn to communicate emotionsâ to the point that his dreamsâquite literallyâcould become reality. At one point after a party during the filmâs shooting, he went back to get a bag from the reinvented office set of the place he once worked, and felt amazed by the point heâd reached in his career. âI sat for awhile and looked around, and I thought it was crazy that I had the opportunity to do thisâto take a memory and have a crew of people re-create it. Iâm quite lucky to have that.â
Surely people who loved Gondryâs work on Eternal Sunshineânot to mention Dave Chapelleâs Block Party or the 2001 film also written by Kaufman, Human Natureâwill be thrilled with his first foray into screenwriting. Theyâll also get to see film techniques Gondry says heâs been âcookingâ in his head for years, like the blast of âspin artâ that starts the film, the illusion of flying created by Bernal swimming through a tank of water with projected animation, or StĂ©phaneâs fantastic invention for StĂ©phanie, the One-Second Time-Travel Machine. And this is just the beginning: this fall, Gondry will start shooting another film he penned (named, as of press time, Be Kind, Rewind), and he has plans for many more projects, including music videosâsomething he still likes to do.
For the most part, though, writing films hasnât changed Gondryâs directing style. He still likes to keep it âloose,â leaving room for âsome happy accident,â and he still often lets actors make their own decisions. He says that in a restaurant recently, a waiter asked him if he wanted the food heâd just ordered for a first or second course. âI couldnât make up my mind,â says Gondry, âso I said something and [the waiter] didnât really hear me, but he left, and I said to the person with me, âThatâs how I direct people.â I knew he didnât understand what I said, but he made his own decision based on that misunderstanding, and I think thatâs as good as any decision I could make.â Often if Gondry gives an actor direction, and the actor asks, âOkay, so should I do this?â and itâs the opposite of what was requested, he still says yes. âItâs not really important,â he says. âItâs just a question of moving forward and conveying the right energy.â
He was very happy with the interpretations his Science of Sleep actors achieved. Bernal, not really known for his comic roles, manages to coax big laughs while also being disarmingly sensitive; Alain Chabat, a popular comedian in France, provides comic relief as StĂ©phaneâs raunchy coworker, Guy; and Gainsbourgâa highly respected French actress who has yet to gain a major following in the U.S.âfully âembodiesâ StĂ©phanie, Gondry says, bringing the sweet-yet-strong character beautifully to life.
Though Sleep and Eternal Sunshine are multilayered, Gondry says he doesnât want to make confusing films (he says he canât stand overly plotted thrillers), he just wants to make films heâd enjoy watching and create stories people can connect with. He says people probably connected to Sunshine because there was something to it (perhaps in the way its leadâJim Carrey as Joelâappeared weak and rejected) that resonated with them. This is why he loves Charlie Chaplin films; though some people find them âtoo sentimental,â Gondry says they touch us because they show that even our heroes can be vulnerable. âI feel like [in films] we need to talk about the little shames we have. Then people can relate and say, âOh, maybe Iâm not the only one to be ⊠rejected, to not be strong.ââ
At the same time, Gondry says, the best films donât explain everything to the audience. âI like movies that donât give away all their keys, because I like to look for them,â he says. Like dreams, perhaps they should be a little abstract, a little more open to interpretation. And, like a dream described to someone else, a filmâs strength is all in the way the story is told. âItâs all about figuring out how youâre going to make the story happen,â he says. âItâs [finding] the invisible thing that you have to put in while you are telling your story that will make it special.â

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