Device Disorder – Weekend
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Michel Gondry’s new comedy “The Book of Decisions” is being released – about how difficult it is for a paranoid person to make a movie, and for those around him to continue to love this paranoid person.
Mark is a genius, but no one knows about it yet. The sponsors of his first film do not seem very happy with the screening: “What did you give us? Everything is gray, ugly, you can’t even recognize the actors!” The producer, with whom Mark worked for many years, confirms that nothing in the film can be understood. Mark, in a rage, goes to plan B: he steals the only copy of the film and runs away with the editors and assistant to the French village, to his aunt, in the wilderness. His unfinished masterpiece so far lasts more than four hours, he himself has not yet seen it, but he will definitely watch it someday, but for now he gives his retinue – the few who still believe in him – tasks. Most often in the middle of the night. Most often impracticable. Find a symphony orchestra in the village (he will write the music himself and conduct it himself; in what sense “you don’t know how”?). Agree with Sting, let him sing for the film. With Sting, yes. What’s unclear here? Start editing the film from the end… no, not even like that! The film will be a palindrome! And in the middle of the film there will be an animated insert about how a little fox wants to open a hairdresser. In parallel with the work on the masterpiece – more precisely, instead of work – he writes the “Book of Decisions”, which should include answers to all questions, to everything in general, including political ones. Don’t listen to anyone. Learn by doing. Listen to those around you.
Yes, it’s important: at the very beginning of the film, Mark stops taking his medication. His aunt, a dear old lady, warns him that he shouldn’t quit these medications just like that, but he just entered the “don’t listen to anyone” phase.
Frenchman Michel Gondry has always been interested in mechanics – the mechanics of the shining of the spotless mind, the instructions for using superheroism, the sickening mechanics of dreams, the cardboard armor needed to make a movie. At the time when he was making films based on the scripts of Charlie Kaufman or the great videos of Björk, he was worried about the mechanics of human nature, all these insides of the world, overgrown with hair, fake trees, memories. Then – in “Rewind” or the recent “Microbe and Gasoline” — he explored the mechanism that allows outsiders to come to terms with the world. You take what you have at hand and build supports out of it.
Mark in the Book of Decisions does the same thing: he takes those around him and builds supports out of them. In the gallery of monsters that populate Gondry’s universe (and for him, it seems, every person is an awkward monster, a monster, a scarecrow), Mark is perhaps the most unpredictable. He instantly loses his temper, he can spend the whole day and the whole night – no matter what, he won’t remember the next day; he hates asking for forgiveness, but he has to, because everyone is constantly offended by him, he worries about everyone and turns the lives of those around him into hell, his thoughts fight with each other – and no, today he is also not going to watch his film, he has no time . If he watches it, he will shit himself from fear or burn with shame. When Mark is asked how he feels, he replies: “As always – I’m sad in the morning, in the afternoon I feel like I’m being manipulated.”
There is a temptation to perceive “The Book of Decisions” as another pseudo-comedy about the director’s inner world or a story about the rubbish that grows from, especially since Gondry dedicated the film to his own aunt and in general is clearly writing a self-portrait – with love and all sorts of abomination. Something like “Amelie”, who abruptly stopped taking pills. “Eight and a Half” is about a little fox and a hairdresser. Mini version of the Gondry series “Kidding”, only tougher, cleared of all external events. There is no outside world. Or no internal? Or no peace? Again this damn uncertainty.
It’s actually a portrait of a man with bipolar disorder, but where other directors are drawn to the depressive, Gondry revels in the manic. Pierre Ninet is ideal in the role of an egomaniac genius – he doesn’t understand anything about people, some things cause him real pain, love is not given to him at all – however, Gondry’s heroes always have some kind of cardboard love. Yes, and in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind too. The aged Françoise Lebrun from Jean Eustache’s “Mommy and the Whore” – here she plays the aunt – sighs very appropriately. Stand-up actress Blanche Garden (films by Quentin Dupieux, “Superstar” Dumont, “Erase History” by Delépine – Kervern) here does not amuse anyone and is not amused herself: most often she looks at her partner with a mixture of distrust, irritation and tenderness – a mixture familiar to anyone who has encountered bipolar disorder.
“The fact that something might not work doesn’t seem like a barrier to me. Well, it won’t work, but at least I tried,” Gondry always said. So do his heroes – narcissists, jokers, Jim Carrey, those who make movies with special effects from tape and sticks, those who build their own house on wheels, those who confuse love with affect, and affect with love. Gondry, a singer of amateurs and procrastinators, is, he says, still fascinated by “the simple technical aspects of filmmaking.”
Some simple solutions in the Book of Solutions are, without exaggeration, ingenious. For example, an editing truck – to rewind the film, you need to turn the steering wheel, to cut it, you need to press the horn. Or the question: “Would you rather hear the truth or go crazy?”
Or the very idea that such a guy lives here, offends everyone around him, gets angry, breaks dishes, is neurotic, a scarecrow. But if you slow down a little, let him do what he wants, don’t get irritated, try to understand, you can see how the world, with a sigh, submits to him. And out of nothing is born – for example, music. Or a bunch of crap. Or a masterpiece.
In general, as always with Gondry, this is an honest paranoid film about the structure of the world, not so much an instruction (although that too), but rather a warranty card. Be careful, the screw over there is loose.
In theaters from November 16
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