Good Timing

This is an excerpt from my journal that I wrote on April 18, 2010, 22:43:

I should be 'working myself to the bone' right now but I just re-re-re-re-etc-watched The Science of Sleep again and I just realized that I am Stephane Miroux. maybe you're really fucked when you are at the point of reading IMDB discussion boards for life advice but this one 'really spoke to me.' from thegrue:

[I think the Science of Sleep is about being let down and the realities of the search for love and meaning in life... it's about building up images of things and people in your mind only to set yourself up for rejection. Stephane does this with everything in his life... he trusts his own mind instead of what he sees in front of him and he keeps getting let down by the reality of situations. whether it's with his job (which he dreams a certain way but in reality is nothing like what he wants) or his love life.

Stephane is originally more interested in Zoe but finds himself having to compromise and go for Stephanie because he thinks she is more interested in him. then he starts to convince himself that Stephanie is really the right one, building up this image of her in his head as somebody who is much more creative, deep, and in need of encouragement/stable love than she really is... and then he's consistently let down by her the more he learns about her... and the more he starts to realize that he was never so much in love with the actual Stephanie than the one he had built up in his mind. then that last scene, he becomes defensive and childish because he wants to place all his bitterness on Stephanie for the tricks his own mind played on him. I took the last dream sequence as his one last attempt to dream up what would be the perfect ending for the relationship he had wanted but wasn't meant to be.

I think one of the reasons why Science of Sleep didn't get better reviews when it opened was that people were fooled by the dream sequences and the style into expecting a flowery and dreamlike movie, when in reality the message of the movie is really rather realistic and more depressing than anything.]

Speculation says that the Science of Sleep is somewhat autobiographical for Michel Gondry. how does one feel like this and channel it into something so beautiful and so comprehensible? I always feel so crazy and like no one could possibly like me if they knew this side of me. you empathize with Stephane though. I guess pain makes very good material for art. and pain in the very fit form of Gael Garcia Bernal doesn't hurt either.



and now I'm writing this part on may 5, 2011, 3:19: it is funny and tragic that one year later I have landed at the same exact spot. I have not been at this spot the entire year, but perhaps just half of it. happy anniversary, feelings. you can go fuck yourself now.