Be Kind.... Rewind !

A sleepy neighbourhood….perhaps not! With Mos Def(Mike), Jack Black(Jerry) and Danny Glover(Mr. Fletcher) around, the neighbourhood would hardly sleep peacefully. Michel Gondry’s forte is in simplicity…. Which perhaps is the most difficult of characteristics to potray in cinema? A must watch, be kind rewind, is a kind reminder of the life that is and how we’re complicating it. The film talks about past glory, modernisation, remixes, corporate insecurities, unity….. above all Creation, creativity ! Perhaps I am reading too much in between lines, maybe one should simply enjoy a beautiful film, but the more I think about it, the more it intrigues me.
Mike and Jerry become film-makers overnight, when Jerry erases all the VHS tapes of the rental house they work in, because he gets ‘Magnetised’ during one of his adventures to sabotage the electricity transformers of the area. They make their own version of Ghostbusters on the original tape….. This becomes an instant hit in the neighbourhood. As the demand keeps increasing they’re forced to SWEED more and more titles form the rental house. The titles include Robocop, 2001- space odyssey, Lion King and more…. Making of Lion King is the best part by the way. Do not miss the Mise-en-Scene of the films they Sweed. Gondry has replicated the shot from 2001-space Odyssey, where they used a turn-table to show weightlessness in space. Absolute genius.
As they keep on Sweeding film after film, Danny Glover comes back from his research outing, to” modernise” his rental shop. This modernisation has been thrust upon him by the local housing commission, as his building is in bad shape, and as a result was to be demolished, unless Mr.Fletcher could ‘modernise’ it. Behind all this story telling Gondry has introduced a legendary jazz singer, Fats Waller, who was supposedly living in the same building as Danny Glover. The dilemma of these three, to not let the building and, its history, be destroyed, is heart warming. The town people too come to support them by being part of an ORIGINAL film they produce, on the life of Fats Waller. Gondry’s use of mixed media like 2D, props made out of things we use every day, is astounding. As a film maker he’s like a child who lets himself loose on whatever he can lay his hands and mind upon, and comes out with a genius concept like Be Kind Rewind. There are no rules, no boundaries, no grammar…. Pure story-telling, a discovery, the sheer joy of the possibilities of cinema.
After seeing the film, I remembered Gargey(Gujju), My batch mate from the film school. He did a documentary on a group of film-makers based in Malegaon, Maharashtra. These guys specialise in SWEEDING popular films of the Bombay film industry. Lagaan, Deewar, Don are just a few of them. Now they’re trying their hands at Hollywood too…. Superman being their latest Sweed. Viva la cinema…… So happy SWEEDING.