Saturday 5 May 2007

The Science of Sleep

As it wasn't sunny today so we couldn't go to Regents Park (boo) we decided to go back to bed and watch a film. I have been wanting to see The Science of Sleep for ages, in fact we even went to go and see it at the pictures once but had a row en route so never quite made it, haha.
Anyway. I like Gael Garcia Bernal especially as my ex-boyfriend went to drama school with him and used to fly into a rage at the slightest mention. Nowadays I can watch Gael guilt-free. He's not that sexy though, and he's a bit of a midget, so I dunno what the fuss is about.
Anyway, I digress. You know how two of the worst things in the world are a. someone telling you about their dream and b. a story that ends with 'and they woke up and it was all a dream!' Well this film combines both of those and I would imagine the vast majority of people would absolutely hate this film. My mum for example, a fine arbiter of taste, would not have lasted five minutes. And I have to concede, it's a lot less accessible than 'Eternal Sunshine...' firstly because they speak in a mixture of languages throughout. That is kind of annoying: subtitles are OK but the mixture is a bit disconcerting, which I suppose is the point. Yawn! I'm such a lazy film watcher- don't make me work too hard or my brain gets confused.
The whole thing reminded me of an extended Bright Eyes video: you know the one with the big talky bit at the start 'At The Bottom of Everything' (what a ridiculous choice for a single: actually- that can't have been a single- I don't own it- so why the hell did they make a video for it? Either way, there could have been a radio edit for the video, dammit!) ANYWAY, the animation and the plane crash in that was very reminicent of the visuals in this film. It was a beautiful film, very quirky and incredibly creative artistically. I completely admire the way it's shot, and the fact that most people would hate it. That's a good thing, of course.
It's just the plot that was the problem really: I'm quite happy to not know if this bit is dream or reality but I found some of it quite jarring and it didn't really help the pace of the film. The characters were also quite annoying- it wasn't a love story where you were really vouching for either side as they were just pretentious knob-heads really. Poor Stephane, a creative person stuck in a dead end job. Join the club, mate.
The ideas for the dreams were good though, it did feel like you were watching a dream unfold, which I think is something cinema rarely captures convincingly.
So yes. As an extended music video, perfect. As a heartwarming, subversive love-story it didn't quite hit the spot for me.

1 comment:

* (asterisk) said...

Wife has a soft spot for Gael, and he seems like an all right guy.

I like that BE vid, actually. It's funny. And it's got Terence Stamp in it and that girl, so how bad can it be?

You think it was weird enough that they made a video for that possibly non-single, but have you ever seen the version with the director's commentary track? Like, why?