Coming to theatres today, Friday, November 22 and to VOD this Monday, November 25: IS THE MAN WHO IS TALL HAPPY? AN ANIMATED CONVERSATION WITH NOAM CHOMSKY
Michel Gondry’s playful engagement with the noted MIT professor just had its world premiere at DOC NYC last night. After opening in NY/LA, it will expand to San Francisco and beyond over the next few weeks before making its international bow at the Berlinale in February.
Very much a film about both Gondry and his learned subject, the doc nearly entirely consists of the filmmaker’s simple but enchanting drawings illustrating a series of far-ranging conversations between the two men. Gondry, who narrates – helpfully transcripted to offset his thick French accent, and, in a few cases, to clarify some points of confusion – explains this conscious stylistic decision as a way to underscore the subjective nature of documentary truth. At the same time, of course, it turns what could have otherwise been a talking heads fest into a vibrant, endlessly creative visually-focused romp through the terrain of language and philosophy that Chomsky and Gondry explore. The latter shows an appealing vulnerability, confessing his disappointment that he’s not always able to make his questions legible to the great thinker, who, appropriately, is happily up for discussing the nature of how humans understand – from the very nature of being, to, as referenced in the title, grammatical construction. It makes for an entertaining and freewheeling exploration of ideas, and an eminently fitting profile of the director and the thinker.
what (not) to doc 