Gondry With The Wind
I completed my viewing of Mood Indigo (Gondry, 2013) and although it’s unlikely to be considered by film critics as the next Gone With the Wind, I wouldn’t go as far a saying ‘frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn’. (BTW, that’s a quote from GWTW, in case you’re like, WTF).
It took me well over half an hour to become accustomed to the acid trip that is Mood Indigo, particularly in its early scenes. It starts off as an arty French toasted mind melt which looks like someone pressing all the buttons on every effects menu all at once, whilst dialogue speedily spills and spews all over the place. I started wondering if I was missing out by NOT being under the influence, but then the film began changing tack in the second half. It becomes more of a cinematic story, thank Christ. By the end, it’s taken some of its own cold metallic pills and had a good lie down. And *spoiler alert* no-one lives happily ever after.
So, here’s my rundown on what’s good about Mood Indigo:
- The time shift from tunnel kiss to domestic bliss… via an insta-matic photographic representation of time and space (pic 1 in this post), a handwritten fourth-wall prelude on its flipside (pic 2) and introduction of a new space (pic 3). As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, we need to be thinking while absorbing media to enable creativity. That formula again: absorbing + thinking = creating. For example, Suzanne Collins created Hunger Games by watching reality television and terrorism news stories, put them together and thought ‘wow, there’s a powerfully impactive, hugely successful and slowly diminishing franchise film series in that!’ And she was 100% right. In my case, the above photo sequence of Gondry’s made me think we could’ve used something similar, such as a calendar, to further illustrate our music video’s time shift loop formulae. I now have an idea for that, which I’ll throw into my next blog post and suggest to my team.
- The shot of the couple walking through the aforementioned tunnel amongst floating feathers is pretty special. From memory, I think it had some slow-mo in it. I’m going through a bit of a fond appreciation phase for slow-mo at the moment. It’s just so effective. Or special effective. (Sorry).
- Acting performances were on point – all quirky but endearing and affecting – especially Audrey Tatou as Chloe.
- The second half of the film discards its hyperactive childlike and narcissistic over-enthusiasm, for a gradual stripping down of tempo and colour palette (to the point of being colourless). It provides contrast in every sense (including visually within frames and in the sense of comparisons between its start and end), increased depth of emotion, and conscientious narrative of space (including walls literally pressing in on protagonists).
- Dark visual humour with sparkling delivery in the interview and funeral scenes.
- It both employs and takes the piss out of Jean Paul Sartre and his branches of philosophy including existentialism, metaphysics and ontology. Sartre’s most famous quotes were ‘hell is other people’ and ‘life is nausea’. It could be said that this film combines those quotes – the first half is ‘life is other people’ and the second half is ‘hell is nausea’.
- Probably the only time a terminal illness such as cancer has ever been, or ever will be, represented with a snowflake. Nice crystallised infection scene though.
- The song entitled ‘Spring’ by Mia Doi Todd. Enough said.
