Michel Gondry: the most unpredictable man in film

Today’s film-makers are a navel-gazing bunch. Often, they seem less concerned with each project’s individual worth than with its place along some grand career trajectory, or “umbilical cord” as Quentin Tarantino refers to the connecting thread of his mighty canon. It’s a mindset that says every film must represent a step forward from the last or else be stricken from the record like so many formative JJ Abrams projects (remember Filofax with Jim Belushi?) Still, if there’s one director you can’t accuse of such preciousness, it’s Michel Gondry.

Since his 2004 breakthrough film Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Gondry has made nine entirely dissimilar features, among them a French surrealist comedy, a concert film in collaboration with Dave Chappelle, a $120m superhero movie, a documentary about his aunt, and an animated conversation with Noam Chomsky, enigmatically titled Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? That last one will be available to stream from Monday, tossed on to iTunes by its production company after UK distributors failed to see the percentage in an hour-and-a-half-long chat between an octogenarian linguist and the director of Be Kind Rewind, set to the latter’s wobbly doodle animations.

In other words, the film is a niche prospect, and one in which Gondry himself seems only intermittently confident. For each of its electric deep-dives into Chomsky’s philosophical worldview, there’s a self-reflexive pause in which the director seems to question the wisdom of the entire project. His doubts are understandable: though the film is based on just a handful of casual interviews, it took nearly three years to complete, thanks to an intensive animation process undertaken almost singlehandedly by the delightful French oddball.

The contrast between the film’s rollicking conversational style and its gruelling stylistic approach is the creative spark that lifts Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? into the realm of Gondry’s best work. Any motion picture with even a hint of structural invention to it will inevitably be likened to jazz, but here’s a film whose dichotomous blend of spontaneity and precision actually justifies the comparison.

Bridging the divide between order and chaos is, of course, Chomsky himself. It’s his writings that first inspired this utterly singular little film, and his increasing years that motivated its director to hurry up and finish the thing, before – in Gondry’s words – “eh, well, he’s dead”. As artistic motivations go, it’s as good a reason as any.