Be kind rewind, be kind remembered

Michel Gondry's "Be Kind Rewind" was viewed by most an all out laughing of the head comedy with a hilarious plot of two video store staffs (Jack Back and Mos Def) to shot their own versions of "classics" movies after they "accidentally" wiped out all the video tape in a rather unbelievable, if not silly way. However, that doesn't stop the film being a more serious study of memories and ways of retaining such memories. This may sound a very odd comparison to Gondry's previous film, "eternal sunshine of a spotless mind" but both films actually had gone far to study the effect of our memories to our feelings. The sweding of video had been so cleverly done that it is almost a slap on the face to the big hollywood studios in which they think big blue screen can almost replace everything. The silly mise-en-scene, amateur production designs would still work perfectly, in order to make an interesting film.

Video tape, or VHS, was almost a last century thing. Gondry had used this as the backdrop of reminding his audiences that we don't easily forget our past, just as if we, who grow up from the 70's and 80's would inevitably stuck with many VHS of our own. The films which were being "sweded", or re-enacted, are almost all 80's classic or older (with the exception of perhaps Rush hour 2, which I am least familiar with!). That era of films are dominated by VHS. That's formed part of our memories, if not a collective one. The film explored different ways of preserving/saving such memories so that it won't be get lost, even if it is being "erased". Indeed, it's almost too much of a kind gesture from Gondry to remind us those are the "good" old days with analogue image coming out from our conventional television set. The raw-ness of the images are with "feeling" and "emotion", compared to the super clear yet ice-cold high definition images we got from our HD LCD TV, in which only being able to operated and understand by technical experts.

The preservation's of our memories got one steps further as the film evolves to from protecting the image on screen, to our memories/attachment to physical thing. In this case, it's the old but historical building where the video store located. The collective memories issues had once again being studied here. With the speed of change in the modern society, esp. in the parts of the world where I am staying in. It's almost too difficult to avoid such changes and it's how we preserve it, or indeed, what we want to remember, which becomes ever more important, and matters. Yet, Gondry always reminded us that there is another question which could have raised. For our complete collective memories, are they simply the result of what we "want" to remember, or the way where things had actually happened/appeared, without our own interpretation? Such topics were only general touched in the film towards the "feel good" ending, but was more explored in his previous works.

Many argued that, without the fantastic script from charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry's work always lack of the depth and humor/twist from Kaufman. However, it is easy to see that Gondry is actually faithful to what he wants to discuss through his own unique way, that is, to look at how we remember things.