When you are about to see Michel Gondry’s “The Science of Sleep”, it is unwritten rule that there is going to be complexity in unwinding the tale. Now I did not find it complex but utterly clueless and disconnected in many different ways possible. In recreating the illusions of dreams and weaving it with reality, it is creative but often boring and disoriented, which might be the reaction he would have wanted the audience to have but I guess I can relish those in my own dreams rather than over a DVD.For a not so clear agenda, the film has a nice touch and sense to create the sequences of dreams. It has a promising opening sequence when the protagonist Stéphane Miroux (Gael García Bernal) cheerfully prepares a recipe for a dream in his dream. He moves back to France in his mom’s apartment whom we never see till the near end and in hopes of getting a creative job lands a boring and uninteresting work in a place which produces calendars. He meets with his neighbour Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her friend Zoé (Emma de Caunes) whom he is initially attracted. Then we see the topsy turvy universe of him. He thinks and we too think he is in dreams but it is a mixture of both or may be we are imagining that. Soon it is known that there is no use in identifying it since it is going nowhere at all.
The artistic experience and the imaginative stretch by any one are largely appreciated and I would love to see anything for it. Still Gondry’s work is too much of cocky intelligence and winking at us for something unreachable for any one. Dreams are an ideal tool for studying a character. It exhumes the wishful forgotten memories and scandalous thoughts inhibited in brain cells in fear of antisocial personality. It is a powerful naked reality which will never be revealed or even accepted by our own logical mind. Having an element of colossal force to dissect some one, we come to know only one thing about Stéphane that his French is not good and he has an aspiration to be the centre of attention (through his imaginary talk show).
The prop such as the one second time machine which by the way is an immaculate creativity is wasted too. The potential to drive a concept like this having certain attention points does not accumulate into a good movie. There is no analogy of life as such but a singular case of a distressed young man desperately needing some help which he never reaches for. In fact it does feel odd that a person of such a random overlapping of dreams and reality is been pursued or even been shed a conversation by Stéphanie. They do have the same imagination but it goes only that far. Or does Stéphanie too interpolate dream and reality as Stéphane does?
An abstract creative thought does have its audience to appreciate. I would and have been open to experimentations and patience in digging the film during and after the span of its running time. Considering the obvious discussion of everything happening as a dream or reality or combination of both results in nothing but blandness in knowing no one. When you finish watching a film, there should be something to be known about at least one character. Even understanding that one does not exist is an achievement as well or may be there is none at all is an accomplishment but it needs to be noticed and in a deep sense of unknown appreciativeness in the process too. “The Science of Sleep” occasionally wakes us up for morning freshness in the visuals but deeply darkens in to a clueless chaotic and pointless nightmare, which does not frighten rather creates a bland void.
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