Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Wed Dec 18, 2013 4:21 pm 
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Animating Noam Chomsky

Is Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? an important film to see? Well, if you are a fan of either Michel Gondry or his subject in the film, Noam Chomsky, it is. If not, your curiosity might be piqued about questions of causality, linguistics, or growing up, or Noam Chomsky the man, or something, by watching the film. It might appeal to you if you like animated films about ideas, like Richard Linklater's dreamy exercise in rotoscoping, Waking Life. To be honest, being familiar with Chomsky's voice and thought, I didn't feel it needed Gondry's hand-drawn stop-motion animated line illustrations (done with his old 16mm. hand-wound Bolex camera, which was also used to show -- for welcome grounding -- occasional images of the two men talking). I found myself closing my eyes to follow the thoughts better, without the distraction of the wiggly lines (and I'm supposed to be a highly visual person). No reflection on Gondry, who learned about Chomsky from two of the best known documentaries about him, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1993) and Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause (2003). Gondry's drawings are ingenious and cute. But they tend to follow one step behind Chomsky's thoughts, rather than significantly enlarge upon them. Due to the well-known low monotone of Chomsky's endlessly thoughtful voice however, closing my eyes did tempt me to doze off so I didn't do it much.

One big thing: except in a personal, brief, autobiographical vein, politics, the great subject of Chomsky's life and cause of his wider fame, is barely mentioned. "Palestine?" Gondry asks, at one point -- and Chomsky explains that since at the time of his father's Zionism, which was about expanding and reviving Hebrew language and culture, not a nation state, there was no Israel. Nowadays, Chomsky says, his father would probably be an anti-Zionist. He also mentions that 17 years later his wife went back to school (when Chomsky would have been somewhere in his thirties) because it seemed likely that Noam might go to prison for a long time, and she'd need to be able to support their three children.

Gondry admits that he has a terrible French accent in English, and at one point Chomsky has to ask him to write a word (it's "endowment") on the blackboard to tell what it is he's saying. Gondry's spoken introduction is therefore off-putting, and small spidery handwritten sentences to illustrate what he's saying at first, again following a step behind, don't help much either. Luckily we get used to the accent, and anyway Chomsky does most of the talking.

Noam Chomsky, who's now 85, has been and is being ceaselessly interviewed, and he rarely turns anyone down so long as he can find the time. Nonetheless Gondry finds his own focus. Even avoiding politics is rather original. Gondry begin with and goes back to personal questions about Chomsky's earliest memory (being fed oatmeal by an aunt at 18 months, and holding it in his cheek because he didn't want to eat it); his early schooling (a Deweyite early school was ideal for him, but high school is largely a blank). He talks about the three children and how they grew up, the son interested in science and math, the two daughters becoming political activists. Asked about his late wife Carol, he at first says "I'd rather not talk about that; I can't get over it") but he does talk about their long, quiet life together, her giving up being a "social butterfly."

Questions about science and linguistics come up, and Gondry deserves credit for wading into topics most of us without a good knowledge of the history of science, paleo-archeology, and structural linguistics are unlikely to be prepared for. As usual, Chomsky's language is simple, direct, and clear, which is not to say all he said meant anything to me.

There are things here that appeal to a Chomsky admirer, and Gondry's approach to him is fluent, respectful, and intelligent; intelligible too, except for those moments when his accent makes a word or phrase blurry. And those multicolored animated line drawings do enliven things. The most unique feature may be the way Gondry, though not immodestly, calls attention to himself, his noisy Bolex, his nerves at first, his worry about getting the film finished and viewed by its subject while the latter is still alive. Because there are many, many recorded interviews with Noam Chomsky, but few of the interviewers leave much of a trace.

What does the title mean? I don't really know. It's an example to show that in many languages, I guess, even a child forms questions on a "structural" rather than "linear" basis. Don't ask. Anyway when Chomsky and Gondry are in the midst of talking about that question (which he even illustrates, comically, with an actual film clip of a boy and a tall man talking), several young people come along and say Noam has to go, and they whisk him away. By the way Chomsky says that being around children and grandchildren makes him happy; but he doesn't think about it much.

Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?, 88 mins., opened 22 Nov. 2013. Screened for this review at IFC Center, New York, 18 Dec. Metacritic rating: 76%.

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