{"id":1062,"date":"2006-10-17T04:12:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-17T04:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/?p=1062"},"modified":"2006-10-17T04:12:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-17T04:12:00","slug":"the-science-of-art-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/the-science-of-art-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"The Science of Art Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night Phil and I ended the day by seeing The Science of Sleep<\/i><\/a>, an arty little flick by Michel Gondry, who brought us Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<\/i>, another lovely little art flick about introspection and memory and perception and, happily, Kate Winslet’s hair. Eternal Sunshine<\/i> is a much darker film than Science<\/i> \u2014 much darker \u2014 even though the ending of Science<\/i> is frustratingly ambiguous and not nearly as optimistic as Sunshine<\/i>‘s. <\/p>\n

Science<\/i> follows St\u00e9phane (played by the criminally handsome Gael Garc\u00eda Bernal), a quirky graphic designer who, since childhood, has had trouble compartmentalizing dreams and reality, each blending into the other to present him with embarrassing and frustrating scenerios in which he has to question his sanity. <\/p>\n

He copes by being introverted \u2014 he says he finds everyone boring \u2014 but when he meets St\u00e9phanie, he becomes increasingly infatuated with her because she is a messy, quirky, artistic soul just like he is. He shows her the world he creates from his dreams and his imagination \u2014 with weird inventions and funny illusions \u2014 and together they make art and hang out and stuff. <\/p>\n

Pretty cool. <\/p>\n

And then they both act all insecure and weird and the relationship can’t take off because they’re both guarded and suspicious and it’s easier for them to interact during playdates where they make stop-motion movies and roboticize stuffed animals. <\/p>\n

There are sweet moments and funny moments, but mostly moments of needless misunderstanding and frustration felt by two people who can’t seem to click in a tangible romantic way. <\/p>\n

The characters are charming enough, I guess. FOR FRENCHMEN<\/a>! St\u00e9phane is annoyingly childish and irresponsible, but he has a quirky sense of humor and a dreamy demeanor you could crawl in bed with. St\u00e9phanie is both pragmatic and creative, mature and silly, and \u2014 perhaps most interesting of all \u2014 she’s no great beauty and is somewhat self-conscious about it. But her charms and creativity still manage to win her the artfreak she loves. (Scandalous! A flat-chested rail of a woman with messy, unwashed hair and eyebags winning a heartthrob? Only in an art flick, kids.)<\/p>\n

There are moments of tediom in this film, but those moments are inconsequential if you just let yourself get lost in Gondry’s spectacle of low-tech whimsy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night Phil and I ended the day by seeing The Science of Sleep, an arty little flick by Michel Gondry, who brought us Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, another lovely little art flick about introspection and memory and perception and, happily, Kate Winslet’s hair. Eternal Sunshine is a much darker film than Science \u2014 much darker \u2014 even though the ending of Science is frustratingly ambiguous and not nearly as optimistic as Sunshine‘s.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1jWWl-h8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}