Review: Be Kind Rewind
March 12, 2008
Mason Judy
The title of Michel Gondry’s latest film certainly evokes nostalgia for all who felt civic pride in returning a VHS cassette rewound.
Be Kind Rewind is the story of one declining video store (Be Kind Rewind) owned by an elderly Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover) and run by Mike (Mos Def). Mike’s best friend Jerry (Jack Black) is an eccentric junkyard owner who becomes magnetized after trying to sabotage an electrical plant. When Mr. Fletcher is informed that his store is scheduled to be demolished to make way for a new development, he goes on a fact-finding mission to a local video chain. Mike is left in charge of the store, and after Jerry demagnetizes all the tapes (erasing all their content), they start to make parodies (”sweds”) of the films in the store. The sweds catch on and they attempt to raise enough money save the store.
As the sweding becomes more popular, it is the inclusion of the community that makes it possible for Mike and Jerry to produce their first original film: a mockumentary on the life of Jazz legend Fats Waller.
On a cinematic level, Be Kind Rewind is not a radical film, yet alongside the tiresome movies being pushed by Hollywood in the past couple of months, it seems downright revolutionary. The über-quirky nature of Gondry in his last two films, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep is present only in passing in parts of the film. At times it almost seems that the main narrative, though constructed well, is merely present to facilitate the making of the sweds and the mockumentary.
One could say that like the archaic nature of the VHS and the rituals that accompany its use, Be Kind Rewind combines a sense of past that is immediate and also foreign.
Now you go...
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