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Written for Skyscraper
Ah, obsession! That wellspring
of inspiration for so many artists. On Michel Gondry’s entry
into the fine Work of the Director series, we get a heap-big serving
of this Frenchman’s finer fixations.
You’ve seen a Gondry video whether you know
it or not. The animated one for the White Stripes constructed
entirely of Legos? That’s him. And that video’s as
good a gauge as any for the compulsive attention to detail found
in the rest of his work.
Gondry’s clearly fascinated with repetition,
with duplication and it’s attendant horrors. Consider the
tales he tells: Bjork’s “Bachelorette” video
features a play within a play within a play within a story automatically
written by a book dug out of the ground by the nymphic Bjork in
the woods. In “Come into my World,” Kylie Minogue
skips a circle through the same street corners, replicating a
new Kylie each time she passes the same drycleaner’s, and
the people around her multiple, too, until the street is teaming
with replicants, each doing his or her own thing, pursuing his
or her own destiny. A Chemical Brothers video details a young
woman waking and turns into a frenetic, kaleidoscopic dance through
her working day. And on another White Stripes video, “The
Hardest Button to Button,” Gondry further explores this
replication theme with meticulously planned arrangements that
must’ve taken untold hours to create, even with an army
of helpers.
Occasionally, the details prove subtler, though
no less extravagant: Massive Attack’s “Protection”
seems a clear-cut effort: a camera pans across the windows of
an apartment complex, so we get a voyeur’s peek into several
lives. Watch the video closely, though, and you note the awkward
bearing of each body. While each resident appears to be standing
or sitting, they’re not: the whole set for Gondry’s
video has been built so that it lays against the ground, and each
character strains to maintain a composure resembling something
akin to normal.
The two-sided DVD also features the aptly titled
documentary “I’ve Been 12 Forever,” which explains
the origins of some of Gondry’s obsessions, including his
fascination with infinity, percussion, and the more deceptive
aspects of perspective.
When you consider the hackneyed effluvia—saturated
with booty, Bentleys and bling—that passes for most MTV
videos these days, Gondry’s work positively dazzles. Which
begs the question: how will Gondry harness his sundry obsessions
in his next project, the Charlie Kaufman scripted flick The Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Can hardly wait to find out.
Official
site
Robert Stribley
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