The director is himself

Michel Gondry's Book of Solutions is about how hard it is to make a movie, but it is completely impossible not to do this

On November 16, a new film by the director and legendary clipmaker Michel Gondry was released in Russian rental. The author of the “eternal radiance of pure mind” and “science of sleep” returns in him to his favorite topic - the riddle of the creative process. The hero of “Book of Solutions” is a director who quarreled with producers about the last experimental film. He decides to turn away from the film industry and make a movie in full accordance with his vision, and not studio requirements. Film critic Oleg Tundra tells how Gondry made a cozy and kind film about the power of imagination and inexhaustible enthusiasm.

At the preview of his own film, film director Mark Beker (Pierre Nina) quarreled with a studio and producer, with whom he worked for many years. The experimental many hours of cinema, which opens a frame with a giant rat hunting for a man in a pot, disappointed the first spectators: “Where is the story?”, “Cinema is some kind of gray and ugly.” Mark is getting out of his temper, altars to smoke and at this time steals from the studio both a film and equipment - to hide in the village and finish everything as he planned.

Together with the director of the installation and producer, he comes to the deadly sick aunt Denise (Francoise Lebrun), part -time actress of his film. So that nothing interferes with the creative imagination, Mark throws out his tablets from a mental disorder ( the film is not called in the film, but Gondri himself has a bipolar disorder.- Approx. Ed. ) And catches a manic wave: it forth with ideas day and night, hysteria, invents the movie on the move and is taken by the Avtobiography “Book of Solutions” Universal instructions for the director in crisis. “To start a project - how to start a car in winter,” he repeats under his breath while everything falls out of his hands. According to the “Mark Beker method”, at first the whole world will take up against, but then the movie, no matter what, will begin to happen. You just need to have time to start before doubts are drawn. So neither quarrels with a team, nor skepticism and warnings from others will coo -outbow the gust of brand: it is not the first to swim against the current.

The magic of personal presence and an analog approach is what Michel Gondri loves for and what can be found in all his works: from the manually made early clips for Bjork and The Chemical Brothers to the series “Sound” and animated dialogues with Noam Khomsky. The new hero of the “Book of Solutions” is already well familiar to us: this is a tireless dreamer from the “Sleep Science” and the film fan from “rewind”-a person who needs to come up with something so as not to go crazy with the boredom and prosaic of the surrounding world.

Creativity and madness often go hand in hand, and Mark Beker in this sense is close to reality - he is similar to many creative people, from whom you want to stay away for your own calm.

Mark gives rise to chaos, he is self -confident, unbearable, eccentric, he subordinates people to his ideas and mood. Narcissism of the protagonist sometimes crosses all the boundaries: "What is the point of being a director if you do not command anyone?" "Do I have the truth or let you fly off the coils?" - ask his assistants, who have known Mark for many years. This is clearly not the first flights in a dream and in reality in his career, in which, it seems, each film can be the last. Mark jackets, screams, apologizes, screams again and apologizes again, turning at some point into an “Apart Factory”. Manic exacerbation plays an endless evil joke with the hero and is about to lead to a disaster. But it is better to burn in such a way than living “sad in the morning and be the object of manipulation during the day”, as the director had, while he took pills.

But the meticulousness and susceptibility of Mark is exactly what keeps him afloat as a creator. You have to be very arrogant and a little touched in order to shamelessly call the Sting to “wash” on the soundtrack, expel the conductor from his own orchestra, come up with a installation table in an old truck and shoot a documentary about an ant for two days. For those who missed the stop-mouses of Gondri ( turning around, “reviving” objects, as in puppet cinema.- Approx. Ed. ), The “Easter” postcard is disposed of-a mini-mullet about the Max Fox, which opens its own hairdresser, where it cuts down with its long ears. This fox Max, a monocle from a hole in a piece of wood and a aunt's culinary video blog Deniz appear among a dozen ideas that will not become a Beker film, just like the decisions of his “Book of Decisions” will not change anything.

The film is about how (not) the film is starred is the favorite author’s genre for directors faced with the cruelty of the film industry, large failures and a creative dead end. In Gondri’s biography there was all the above: both the green horne blockbuster blockbuster, and did not justify the hopes of the film on the “Pena of Days” by Boris Vian, and almost ten years of silence without filming full -length cinema, which is certainly stagnation for such a prolific author.

But in the “Book of Decisions”, Gondri clearly remembered himself the former and the force that dragged him out in the cinema - an indefatigable thirst for research, which cannot be approached rationally, with a production ruler.

Pierre Nina managed to convincingly convey the image of a man captured by unknown traction from the inside, which still remains a mystery: why doesn’t someone sit still and want to invent alternative worlds? And why does reality resist this? The only answer that Gondry offers the audience and to yourself: if you cannot help but invent and not make a movie, then this is really your calling. No matter how strange you may seem from the outside.