Michel Gondry, whose Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004; my article on amnesia and memory movies) was one of my top ten films of its year, is messing with our brains again.
The Hollywood Reporter says Gondry will direct Be Kind Rewind beginning in September. The film will star Jack Black as “a junkyard worker . . . whose headaches lead him to believe his brain is melting. His brain is magnetized, leading to the unintentional destruction of movies in his friend’s store. In order to keep the store’s one loyal customer, an elderly lady with signs of dementia, the pair re-creates a long line of films including ‘The Lion King,’ ‘Rush Hour,’ ‘Back to the Future‘ and ‘Robocop.'”
In a way, it sounds like this film deals with the loss and retrieval of collective memory, just as Eternal Sunshine dealt with the loss and retrieval of personal memory. Could make an interesting double-bill — though you have to wonder why these characters don’t just buy new copies of the videos that got erased.
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