December 1, 2000
Boards Magazine
Slipping through the side entrance of the Hollywood Hills Coffee Shop, Michel Gondry quietly seats himself in a booth and orders a hot chocolate. Articulating his ideas and sipping hot cocoa with a naive sophistication, the director embodies the very paradox that characterizes his work.
Through Partizan, Gondry has built a commercial and music video reel that is as notable for its innovation as its awards. Levi's "Drugstore" received the Gold Lion at Cannes in 1994, and was one of the director's first attempts at commercial work.
In 1997, "Smarienburg" for Smirnoff claimed the Gold at both Cannes and the Clios. With the success of videos like the Chemical Brothers' "Let Forever Be" and a series of spots shot for Gap's "That's Holiday" campaign, Michel Gondry's feature Human Nature may be one of the most highly anticipated films of the year, certainly amongst the commercial production community.
Human Nature is the director's first feature film starring Patricia Arquette and Tim Robbins. Written by Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich), the film's producers are Anthony Bregman, Julie Fong, Ted Hope, Kaufman and Spike Jonze.
For Gondry, the filmmaking process is an opportunity to embark on a personal journey. "You have a lot of immature feelings that you get from growing up," says Gondry, "through your experience. When you relive them, it's like a sweet sensation."
"When you tell a story, you release this internal bubble of emotion accumulated in your life. If you can mix them all together to tell a big story, it's really satisfying. Then you can share that with other people."
To date, the director's most autobiographical piece is a short film titled "The Letter" in which an innocent boy realizes his love is unrequited. "It's a bit masochistic," reveals the director, "it's about wishing...sadly wishing."
The short is emotive; a device Gondry says is born out of his desire to create a believable narrative. "You get excited because you tell a story that you like and you tell it with images that touch you. The goal, I guess, is to get people to share those emotions; for them to be touched by what you were touched by."
Gondry was taken by the humanity portrayed in Kaufman's script, given to him by director Spike Jonze. "I was really trying to find a script that I enjoyed to read and I read three scripts from Charlie that were very original and very well structured with great characters," says Gondry. "Each time somebody stuck in me, they were just expressing their feelingsin a funny way."
"On top of that [Kaufman's] dealing with the hardest genre, comedy, which is the most established form in a way. You have to follow the words otherwise it's not funny, it's not working. On the other hand it's incredibly original. So it's really challenging to make it work."
Part of the challenge for the director was maintaining the integrity of the characters throughout the editing process. "The main difference [between commercials and film] is that you have to be careful with the balance of things," says Gondry. "If a part of the movie seems a little bit disconnected or dragging, then you perceive the rest of the scenes in thewrong way."
"As well, you have to be consistent with the evolution of character. When I started to shorten the film my main concern was to create human characters not cynical ones," continues Gondry. "I notice a lot of independent American movies play to cynicism and are a little bit condescending to the audience and I really wanted to avoid that."
"I tried to bring a lot of humanity to the characters. It's still quite a harsh story but on a really human level. There's a human reason to do what they do."
The storyline is complicated. Arquette plays Lila, a woman with a skin disease that has rendered her body covered in hair. Lila is involved with a scientist, Nathan, played by Robbins. The pair finds a wild man who has been raised in the woods and together they decide to "civilize" him, an undertaking that exposes many truths and complexities of humankind.
"It's hard to tell the story from a narrative point of view," says Gondry. "It is very structured. It's more about, for instance, how you feel as a woman. A woman has to shave her legs whereas a man can shave or not shave; he's free to do either. But a woman, before she goes out, has to transform herself."
"As well, it's about how sometimes you think you're really helping people by educating them, but you are just giving them the wrong thing."
Integral to the director's creations is innovation, in the same vein as animator and director Norman McLaren, who Gondry cites as one of his influences. "People like McLaren are the experimenters of the medium, the inventors. I make sure when I try anything that I come up with a system or an idea. The fact that I'm trying to find a solution myself is very important to me. I'm not asking people to solve my problem."
"It's trying to solve technical problems, but as well it's always a little geometric kind of riddle," explains Gondry referencing the kaleidoscopic work for the Chemical Brothers and Gap. "I like to solve with experimentation. For instance, I wanted to do a geometrical pattern with people multiplying from one to three to nine; they're forming all that in one motion. It's quite organized. I find complex patterns by using different organization."
"The idea of the Chemical Brothers video was to recreate the choreography reflecting a video effect so it's like one person multiplied like a still reverb and then without transition she releases seven dancers that can come back as an effect, a compression effect as an execution."
"Technically, he's heads and shoulders above everybody else," says Jonze, who began tracking the director's work after seeing the video for Bjork's "Human Behavior."
"He's inventing in-camera techniques. He's inventing ways of using the camera, rigs to use with the camera and post-production techniques all the time. Beyond that, as technically amazing as his stuff is, it has a heart and charm and childlike imagination that is totally his own."
"For me," states Jonze, "I see his stuff and it really seems like nothing else. The Chemical Brothers video he did really doesn't seem as though there are any direct influences besides a very original take on '80s video effects. Beyond that it sort of takes off into something entirely different."
"To him, it's all very simple. For instance the Cibo Matto video 'Sugar Water.' Michel says it's a palindrome. It's the same forwards as it is backwards. The first time I got it on tape I watched it six times in a row and didn't even begin to quite comprehend it."
"There's definitely a kind of na*ve quality to Michel's stuff," says Jonze, "like in the Daft Punk video. There's something that as complicated and sophisticated as it is, it also has this sort of naive feeling of being a children's play on some level."
Contributing to the childlike sense of wonder is Gondry's use of various formats. The director derived the technique of combining 35mm with video from British TV shows shot in the '70s.
Says Gondry; "They were always using film outside and video inside. It's always on stage. It's very crisp on video and when they go outside of the door into the garden it's shot with a Bolex or a 16mm camera. It's shot with a totally different texture but it doesn't matter because the continuity works."
While Gondry says he did not experiment much during the shooting of Human Nature in terms of the technique, he did employ his trademark tools as seen in his music videos such as light projection. In addition, he surrounded himself with the usual suspects who have helped to recreate his universe for short-form projects including DP Tim Maurice-Jones, wardrobe designer Nancy Steiner and production designer K.K. Barret.
"I think, as much as I could, I brought people in who had worked with me," comments Gondry. "Sometimes you have a lot of creativity on commercials or especially videos and then you have opportunity to do a movie with people who are working from this medium already. Those people won't let you work your way, and I think, what's the point of doing a movie if you're going to do it exactly the same way that everybody has been doing forever?"
"At least working with my people I thought they would follow my vision, my mind. With this movie we really did something that they don't generally show in movies," says Gondry.
"There is one scene where it moves from branch to branch and we built a huge succession of branches on stage and it was moving on a big train. Behind it was a big screen with a red forest. It really feels like you are jumping across branches but in reality it was only a little stage. I don't think people shoot like that now because you don't use that a lot and it was my dream to recreate reality in my own way."
Spike Jonze shot 2nd Unit. "I would just show up in the morning and get my shot list from the director, go get my crew, shoot stuff, and bring it back to him to see if it was what he was thinking," recalls Jonze. "I was watching dailies a lot so I tried to keep it in the same style. I tried to give him a lot of options to play with in the editing room."
Human Nature is currently in post-production and will likely be released in the spring. Michel Gondry says he will take a brief hiatus once the film is completed before returning to music videos and commercials.
"Obviously after doing a movie, it seems very holiday-like to do a commercial," reflects Gondry. "It's such a long experience. Even when you shoot, you never quite believe you are doing a movie."
His suspension of disbelief is similar to that of the protagonist in "The Letter" racing downhill on a bicycle. A broom is waved in front of the camera to create a blinking effect as the viewer experiences the child's field of vision.
Commenting on the clever device, Jonze says, "He's very inspiring that way, in terms of how incredibly complicated or simple it is when looked at in a different way."
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