You wake up with, like a vanishing flash, the memory of a disconcerting film about dreams, dating from the early 2000s and partly filmed in Paris. Is it aboutInception…or its perfect negative, The Science of Dreams by Michel Gondry?
D’Alice in Wonderland to the filmography of David Lynch, through Paprika ou the Freddy saga, dreamlike has long been a golden theme for cinema. If some works use it only as a twist cheapos (the list of “it was just a dream”longer than a sleepless night), many people capitalize on a unique atmosphere or mode of narration.
Two years after the great Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless MindMichel Gondry confronts it in turn. Supported by a cast of sweet, ethereal crazy people (Gael García Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat), he plunges us into the loving twists and turns of our psyche. But what is the trace of The Science of Dreams in the cinematic unconsciouswhile the juggernaut Inception crushed everything a few years later?
The Gondry subject par excellence
What is it about Inception ? The answer seems obvious: dreams, whether they are embedded, entangled, permeable or designed as direct access to the source of our ideas. But is this really his main point? His detractors reproach him for his strangely dry imagination… Because just like New York traffic is not the subject of Taxi Driverthat ofInception (and 75% of Christopher Nolan's films), it's time.
Dreams are the pretext since each stratum corresponds to a different flow, like a mille-feuille forgotten next to a black hole. Michel Gondry, for his part, does not compromise: The Science of Dreams mainly talks about… dreams (and love, but aren't pure romances fragments that have escaped into our reality?) And for anyone even a little familiar with the man, this theme appears obvious.
Gondry made a name for himself thanks to his creative video clips, which allowed him to accumulate prestigious collaborations: Björk, the Rolling Stones, Daft Punk, The Chemical Brothers… The artist has never hidden being inspired by his dreams for certain effects of proportion and other visual associations. It stands out in particular for its use of morphing, which creates a fluid transition between two different images, like a gentle slide from wakefulness to sleep.
His move to a feature film confirms it: after the wacky Human Nature in 2001, he struck people's minds with the romantic suspense drama Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless MindOscar winner for his screenplay. Jim Carrey struggles with the memory relics of his story with Kate Winslet, which allow the filmmaker to deploy a very characteristic visual patina and rhythm.
These memories which evaporate before our eyes give the feature film a blatant dreamlike quality. What could be more logical for Gondry than to then tackle the dreams themselves, for his third film which must confirm his singularity? For the first time, he frees himself from Charlie Kaufman and writes the screenplay alone.
Where Nolan stalks like a control freak the eccentric emanations of the dream as so many obstacles to the good performance of its cerebral steering, The Science of Dreams eagerly engulfs itself in their oddities. Spider razor, cellophane water, cotton clouds suspended by music, cardboard cart, disproportionate hands… the film unreservedly endorses their surrealist character.
The protean dream
One of the particularities of The Science of Dreamsis that there are two distinct arrangements. If the process may now seem customary, it generally betrays complicated production, a sick film infused into the director’s cut. It can also come from filmmakers who, years later, decide to put their aging baby through the knife (the scheme is widespread in a galaxy far, far away).
It is more atypical for a director to offer two versions of his work himself, without this resulting from any conflict, less than a year after the release, or from a desire to sell a “long version” way Rebel Moon. Pour The Science of Dreams, everything was decided from the DVD edition by Gaumont. Between an educational tablet provided by specialists in cognitive sciences and a long-winded conversation between Chabat and Gondry, the latter slipped in a very particular bonus.
By immersing himself in the rushes discarded from the film presented on the big screen, he had the feeling that they fit together rather well for offer a new narrative experience. The filmmaker himself speaks of them, in a somewhat convoluted manner, not as “cut scenes” but “discarded sections of the story”. Of which act.
-Gaumont gives the green light without complaint, and Gondry sets about polishing this unexpected echo. This version, named “B”, will even be entitled to a small theatrical release in March 2007. If it only shows 70 minutes on the clock, it airs out the story which was initially stripped down as much as possible to leave plenty of room for Stéphane and Stéphanie.
The plot is enriched with abandoned sequences and alternative takes. She replays certain scenes in a different waylike these poorly digested memories shrouded in dreams with a disturbing strangeness. Miou-Miou gains thickness to the detriment of Charlotte Gainsbourg. The hero's moods are heavy.
If it contains more passages “in reality”, its elliptical aspect paradoxically makes it a more dreamlike story. Gondry thus completes his deconstruction of classic narration. The spectator is encouraged to weave the connections between the scenes on his own, in the same way that the brain confers a semblance of coherence, however complicated it may be, to the disparate flashes with which the unconscious bombards it.
The title of the film reflects this ambivalence: The Science of Dreams is almost an oxymoron. Can we reduce dreams to their neurobiological mechanics when in essence they seem out of control? Gondry espouses letting goand draws from the latent depression of its hero this haunting rhythm which plunges us into a second state, like a prerequisite to inception.
Better than the top from Inception?
This version B goes beyond cosmetic ornament. By this addition, Michel Gondry prevents The Science of Dreams to let yourself be frozen once and for all. The alternative works in addition to the first, it does not establish any hierarchy and does not claim to be better than the originaljust different. The filmmaker himself advises those who wish to discover his work to choose a coin.
It is also for the director an admission of humility, a way to step aside and delegate one's power to the viewer. Usually, the editor fixes a final version of the film on a reel. Regardless of the richness and variety of the preliminary shots, the public will only consume a predigested selection which more or less strongly orients its perception.
By encouraging spectators to create a dialogue between the versions, to discover one or the other indifferently, Gondry pushes everyone to create a unique experience of the film. He refuses to put an end point that is too definitive. Doesn’t that remind you of anything?
A top spins, hypnotic. Whether it falls or not will depend on the true nature of this apparent happy end. And while she pretends to waver… cut. Generic. With this open ending, Nolan made sure to generate numerous theories and more or less elaborate rereadings (the famous ring) which prevent the work from closing in on itself.
Both works can be read through cinema itself. In Inceptionthe characters play different roles depending on the strata, and its cut emblematic, as much as the double montage of The Science of Dreamsare intrinsically cinematic tools.
For his part, the hero played by Bernal runs a dream-making show that will make one pale. Vice versa. In forcing the viewer to become aware of the artificethe artist relinquishes the reins of narration, in the same way that the lucid dreamer can take control of his dreams.
If its notoriety remains much less than the jewel Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind, The Science of Dreams helped to establish the Michel Gondry style, this alliance of crazy conceptual richness and visual inventiveness of the DIY trend. We are now eagerly awaiting its suede version ofInception…
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