Be Kind Rewind
Directed by Michael Gondry
The surprisingly nostalgic sight of VHS boxes is the most poignant thing in Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind. It’s like the closetful of stacked-away board games in The Royal Tenenbaums: the detritus of our youth or of once-shared passions. In Gondry’s new film, the VHS boxes are the capital of a mom-and-pop video rental store in Passaic, N.J., called Be Kind Rewind, owned by Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover). As the pop-culture archivist of a mixed-race neighborhood, Mr. Fletcher instructs his young assistant, Mike (Mos Def), about Fats Waller, the legendary entertainer who was born in the very building that houses the video store. Respect for the cultural past—and affection for handmade art like Waller’s ingenious piano playing—is Mr. Fletcher’s bequest to Mike. Pop artifacts, the source of Gondry’s cinematic quirks, dominate the movie.
Gondry continues to salute hands-on arts-and-crafts as in his 2006 heartbroken romance The Science of Sleep. But Be Kind Rewind enlarges that movie’s introspective dreaming through this equally fantastic tale of how Mike and his best friend Jerry (Jack Black) accidentally erase all Mr. Fletcher’s VHS stock and frantically remake movies from Ghostbusters to 2001: A Space Odyssey to fulfill the neighborhood customers’ demand. Like Tim Burton turning the biopic Ed Wood into the loony story of communal activity, Gondry uses his nostalgia for the outmoded form of movies-on-videotape to reinforce a sense of social solidarity.
As a feet-on-the-ground surrealist, Gondry fetishizes the VHS tape. He understands how cultural progress that destroys also necessitates invention. Mike and Jerry’s calamity forces them to create their own backyard cinema. In this avant-garde gesture, Mike and Jerry use early-model video equipment (like Sadie Benning used the limited-edition Mattel Pixel camera) as their means to the next step of visual art. Wild-eyed Jerry calls these remakes “Sweded”—pretending that they are rare imports—but the term also jokingly stands for the process of compressing and personalizing commercial product. The Sweded films supply the movie’s slapstick gags. One of the best is a Boyz N the Hood remake where a drive-by shooting victim’s head lies in a “blood-and-guts” pool that is actually a pizza but also resembles a junk-food halo. Such cute humor endears Gondry’s manic storytelling the same way the Sweded movies win over Passaic’s diverse citizens.
Mike and Jerry are Slackers N the Hood. Mos Def’s squirrelly voice barely admits rage or ambition (“What the duck!” is his harshest retort). Jack Black makes Jerry’s mania benign; a habitué of a junkyard paradise, he embodies Gondry’s visionary side. This duo progresses from manchild and freak to primitive artists when they eventually make a Sweded biography of local hero Fats Waller. Not capitulating to new technology (instead of Blu-Ray slickness, the roughly made film simulates the antiqued look of old B&W cinema), they discover that one’s relationship to art—as maker or consumer—is best when personal. And the community rallies like in a Rene Clair movie.
Be Kind Rewind represents exactly the kind of progressive art that Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There denies. Gondry’s inventiveness shakes up the movie-watching habit; he doesn’t congratulate self-consciousness but instead uses audience awareness to increase social engagement, to redefine personal relations and to enhance the purpose of art. The Sweded When We Were Kings spoofs Mike and Jack’s joshing as does their Sweded Ghostbusters (“I’m Bill Murray, you’re everybody else,” razzes Mike). The Sweded King Kong parodies the guys’ infatuation with neighborhood cutie Alma (Melonie Diaz); the Sweded Driving Miss Daisy teases the interracial friendship between Mr. Fletcher and his neighbor Mrs. Falewicz (a pixilated Mia Farrow).
Gondry’s movie is wacky and might have made more sense as a short, yet it has a large, revolutionary soul. Fats Waller is seen as heroic because his honky-tonk jazz exemplifies idiosyncratic artistry and underappreciated, subcultural sophistication. Sweding Waller’s life story creates a kind of cinematic graffiti that rewinds, rewrites and corrects Hollywood history. (Although Gondry could have better connected the story’s two halves by Sweding the legendary 1943 film Stormy Weather.) As Mrs. Falewicz says, “Our pasts belong to us. We can change it if we want.” That’s a radical proposition, pointing to the future. Although Mr. Fletcher feels pressured to upgrade his inventory and compete with DVD culture, before giving in to “progress” he sanctions Mike and Jack’s naive revolution.
Their Sweded movies contain such visionary enchantment—the visual wit that made Gondry a music video wunderkind—that you often can’t quite believe what you’re seeing. Gondry toys with real and fake, past and present, old and new. Be Kind Rewind explores the meaning of originality, but it’s also a fable about art and social change.
Directed by Michael Gondry
The surprisingly nostalgic sight of VHS boxes is the most poignant thing in Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind. It’s like the closetful of stacked-away board games in The Royal Tenenbaums: the detritus of our youth or of once-shared passions. In Gondry’s new film, the VHS boxes are the capital of a mom-and-pop video rental store in Passaic, N.J., called Be Kind Rewind, owned by Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover). As the pop-culture archivist of a mixed-race neighborhood, Mr. Fletcher instructs his young assistant, Mike (Mos Def), about Fats Waller, the legendary entertainer who was born in the very building that houses the video store. Respect for the cultural past—and affection for handmade art like Waller’s ingenious piano playing—is Mr. Fletcher’s bequest to Mike. Pop artifacts, the source of Gondry’s cinematic quirks, dominate the movie.
Gondry continues to salute hands-on arts-and-crafts as in his 2006 heartbroken romance The Science of Sleep. But Be Kind Rewind enlarges that movie’s introspective dreaming through this equally fantastic tale of how Mike and his best friend Jerry (Jack Black) accidentally erase all Mr. Fletcher’s VHS stock and frantically remake movies from Ghostbusters to 2001: A Space Odyssey to fulfill the neighborhood customers’ demand. Like Tim Burton turning the biopic Ed Wood into the loony story of communal activity, Gondry uses his nostalgia for the outmoded form of movies-on-videotape to reinforce a sense of social solidarity.
As a feet-on-the-ground surrealist, Gondry fetishizes the VHS tape. He understands how cultural progress that destroys also necessitates invention. Mike and Jerry’s calamity forces them to create their own backyard cinema. In this avant-garde gesture, Mike and Jerry use early-model video equipment (like Sadie Benning used the limited-edition Mattel Pixel camera) as their means to the next step of visual art. Wild-eyed Jerry calls these remakes “Sweded”—pretending that they are rare imports—but the term also jokingly stands for the process of compressing and personalizing commercial product. The Sweded films supply the movie’s slapstick gags. One of the best is a Boyz N the Hood remake where a drive-by shooting victim’s head lies in a “blood-and-guts” pool that is actually a pizza but also resembles a junk-food halo. Such cute humor endears Gondry’s manic storytelling the same way the Sweded movies win over Passaic’s diverse citizens.
Mike and Jerry are Slackers N the Hood. Mos Def’s squirrelly voice barely admits rage or ambition (“What the duck!” is his harshest retort). Jack Black makes Jerry’s mania benign; a habitué of a junkyard paradise, he embodies Gondry’s visionary side. This duo progresses from manchild and freak to primitive artists when they eventually make a Sweded biography of local hero Fats Waller. Not capitulating to new technology (instead of Blu-Ray slickness, the roughly made film simulates the antiqued look of old B&W cinema), they discover that one’s relationship to art—as maker or consumer—is best when personal. And the community rallies like in a Rene Clair movie.
Be Kind Rewind represents exactly the kind of progressive art that Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There denies. Gondry’s inventiveness shakes up the movie-watching habit; he doesn’t congratulate self-consciousness but instead uses audience awareness to increase social engagement, to redefine personal relations and to enhance the purpose of art. The Sweded When We Were Kings spoofs Mike and Jack’s joshing as does their Sweded Ghostbusters (“I’m Bill Murray, you’re everybody else,” razzes Mike). The Sweded King Kong parodies the guys’ infatuation with neighborhood cutie Alma (Melonie Diaz); the Sweded Driving Miss Daisy teases the interracial friendship between Mr. Fletcher and his neighbor Mrs. Falewicz (a pixilated Mia Farrow).
Gondry’s movie is wacky and might have made more sense as a short, yet it has a large, revolutionary soul. Fats Waller is seen as heroic because his honky-tonk jazz exemplifies idiosyncratic artistry and underappreciated, subcultural sophistication. Sweding Waller’s life story creates a kind of cinematic graffiti that rewinds, rewrites and corrects Hollywood history. (Although Gondry could have better connected the story’s two halves by Sweding the legendary 1943 film Stormy Weather.) As Mrs. Falewicz says, “Our pasts belong to us. We can change it if we want.” That’s a radical proposition, pointing to the future. Although Mr. Fletcher feels pressured to upgrade his inventory and compete with DVD culture, before giving in to “progress” he sanctions Mike and Jack’s naive revolution.
Their Sweded movies contain such visionary enchantment—the visual wit that made Gondry a music video wunderkind—that you often can’t quite believe what you’re seeing. Gondry toys with real and fake, past and present, old and new. Be Kind Rewind explores the meaning of originality, but it’s also a fable about art and social change.
