La science des rêves...(20/8)

Michel Gondry's new work! Much expected, the film continues Gondry's study of dream and reality...carrying the success of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Gondry makes full use of his success formula with creativity and imagination packaged in a story of love. The film is good but well, it is just always some balance between the work and my high expectation I had before entering the cinema. As Gondry produces work to let his audience coming out with fun and joy, the work is successful. Projecting his unique attractiveness to the camera world, the film was empowered by plenty scenes of lovely toys and animations - an extension to his dreamland in his previous MV works. The casting is nice - featuring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Gael Garcia Bernal, the story of neighborhood love was filmed in a decent manner. The styling of Charlotte Gainsbourg was very pleasant and she does carry a nice charisma inherited from Jane Birkin. The story talks about the dilemma between reality and dream, an attempt to study and conquer the dream, a methodology to project a meaning of existence through dreams. A cartoon-way demonstration is what Gondry brands in his big screen. The set design and props were the winning elements in the film, and with the handy toys like the cardboard vehicles, the mega hands, the stuffed-toy telephone and the colour plastic flips for the sea the boat was looking for in the film, the animated world became the inventive playground of the two characters Stephane and Stephanie. Not sure if Gondry would like to tribute Burroughs' and Cronenberg's typewriters with his animated version but they appeared nice in the dream. The story is tragic in a sense that the ending rested between the dream and the reality. Perhaps what we have in the dream would always be lovelier, be it a sweet dream or a nightmare, it is just a dream and we still have another chance to start a new one by closing our eyes.
The film will be on screen in US in this fall, and actually I feel that a direct translation of an Eng name 'The Science of Dreams' should be a better choice than the currently named 'The Science of Sleep'. The film has two versions of trailer for France and US. Having a manner of editing and picks in the two trailers, you may have an understanding on the difference between the French cinema and the Hollywood production.
US Version:
http://pdl.warnerbros.com/wip/us/med/scienceofsleep/science_of_sleep_the_tlr1_qt_700.mov
French Version:
http://www.gaumont.fr/films/sleep/video/sdr_fa_qtlarge.mov

Coincided with my thought, the film creates a branched website named howdoyoudream.com (check http://thescienceofsleep.imeem.com/blogs), and people can simply post their dreams on the blog. I did this occasionally here on my blog but as a collective manner of storage, this provides an easier means to a proof of my belief that dream actually intersects and interacts within people...at least this is my thought.

Naked Lunch...(13/7)

I called this achievement perhaps. After struggling for ages, finally I got a touch of the story - the Naked Lunch, in a by-passing manner...
Naked Lunch should always be regarded as one of the greatest works of Burroughs. I kept the book on my shelf for long time without the courage and patience to go into the script. Last time when I was in Portland, I spent hours in a giant bookshop named Powell’s in the evening, and I found all the works of William Burroughs selling at good prices. I bought quite some of them, but then I keep all of them resting in good peace and pieces for long time. Until now, I commenced by an interpretation of David Cronenberg. The director has always been being a favourite to me, and rooting from his unique beauty of film noir in film making, he has already established his stylish filming angle in The Fly decades ago. Cronenberg picked up the crux of the beat generation, and it is the truncated filming of bits and pieces along the storyboard. The setting and the atmosphere of the Interzone is a symbol of exotic dreamland to the culture of the film producer, the writer or the audience. Based on the international zone in Tangiers, Morocco where Burroughs lived for a period of time, the film created a dimension of hyper-high. Well, a very typial misfit of the US production on the landscape of exotic place appeared. Though Interzone can be a fake intersection in the naked banquet, a scene-set based on the Maghreb area needs not be a perfect imagination of the space for the junkies in the film of Cronenberg. The story depicts a very 'romantic' / 'self-centred' expression about writing and meditation. It touches though. Cronenberg tried to keep the essence of the works of Burroughs in some sense, and the script is flying high. This is a nice way to chase the dragon, perhaps. I have yet reached the climax of the 'Literary High' or 'Kafka High', but then, I still think. I have my sound machine. It works on me. Again, this is a scope of psychopharmacology. Let's Start Dizzy. As trademarked as works of Cronenberg in the 90's, the buggy typewriters were all the herbal characters in the film...Clark Nova or Martinelli, whatever it is named. Each of them possesses a feminine tenderness of touch and love to William Lee in the film. The film explicitly talked about gender and homosexuality. This is a topic of Burroughs' work too, and so Cronenberg expressed his view with the intimate typewriters the writers were using.
Doppelgänger is another topic the film covered. In fact, it has long been a choice of elements for fictions and films. A classic one would be Le Double Vie de Veronique. In Naked Lunch, Joan appeared two times in a symbolic form of figure that provided an exit to William, the representative (or called him an agent) to Burroughs (and/or Cronenberg). A state of sporadic hallucinations, quoted William in the film, offered the character his journey from the US to the Interzone, and from the Interzone to Annexia, a search of his Dr. Benway, or the creator of his dreams and life.
There is a script in the film, 'all is lost'. There is no meaning to 'all' in the world. Keep wandering and shooting.

By chance, I got two quotes this morning...
- Freedom comes when you learn to let go, creation comes when you learn to say no.
- Lightness weights when you let it a go, quietness sounds when you smash it your own show.