Pretty Good

Brilliant and touching

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

What? No Gondrys on IMDb today? Well then I guess the rest of us can pack up and go home. Forgive me for being insensitive to cinematic master Michel Gondry's cherished family memories, but I'm going to have some fun slamming this film. Why? Because if nothing else, I don't want my review to bore you as much as "The Thorn in the Heart" bored me.Seriously I could only take about 40 minutes, and even that was because my dog was lying on the remote so I couldn't shut it off.All kidding aside, before I start I'd like to quote something said by the late, great Stanley Kubrick when asked if he used LSD to get his uniquely bizarre ideas. He answered, "No. I believe that drugs are basically of more use to the audience than to the artist ... One of the things that's turned me against LSD is that all the people I know who use it have a peculiar inability to distinguish between things that are really interesting and stimulating and things that appear so in the state of universal bliss the drug induces on a good trip." (Agel, The Making of Kubrick's 2001, 1970, excerpted from the Playboy interview, p. 346)"The Thorn in the Heart" is about Suzette Gondry, Michel's aunt. Now I would say that Michel obviously finds that subject to be really interesting. However, I submit that his subjective and emotional involvement with his aunt severely compromised his "ability to distinguish between things that are really interesting and things that appear so in a state of universal bliss." Whether LSD was involved is a different matter.The film opens with a scene around the dinner table of about 12. No one is introduced, we're just supposed to piece together who's who (incidentally, the whole documentary is shot this way... fine for family albums but not so easy for us outsiders to follow). The woman referred to as Suzette chimes in with a story. It goes on for a painfully long time because she keeps breaking into laughter in mid sentence, getting more and more hysterical with her unfinished story until the others at the table literally begin a different conversation, something about vomits and farts (I'm not kidding). Suzette eventually finishes the anecdote, but by this time everything has dragged on so long that nobody, least of all the audience, gets the point. Literally, a few people ask her to repeat the punchline. "He could've had what? ...Oh, sauerkraut? Oh haha," they laugh languidly. Sure, to the Gondry family it's an endearing moment. But to us, meeting someone for the first time and sitting through this, it's slightly aggravating. And believe it or not, that opening scene was the most eventful scene in the 40 minutes I sat watching, while carefully trying to roll my dog off the remote so not to disturb her sleep, which seemed far more enjoyable than my experience on the couch.I feel like the documentary could have benefited tremendously from an objective co-director, someone who could politely tell Michel that people don't understand inside jokes of strangers. And instead of putting the film together in a dry, historical way (chronologically beginning at 1954 and progressing year by year by year), the objective editor might have suggested to begin with something sensational and dramatic, the way even famous biopics are structured so that the audience is given a reason to invest their time watching.Is this a bad film? Certainly not. I do distinguish between 'bad' and 'boring' (often they are not synonymous). But for me, this film conjured up nightmarish memories of the times I would end up at a stranger's party, not knowing a soul, not understanding all their inside jokes, and growing more awkward and agoraphobic by the minute. I no longer go to strangers' parties, wisely. And I think I'll make it a rule that I'll no longer watch strangers' home movies. "Voyeuristic" is a word used by another reviewer, and I now understand what was meant by it. To the Gondry family, I'm genuinely happy that you have this excellent way of preserving your cherished family memories. With all due respect, I'll just put this DVD back where I found it, as if I had accidentally bumped a priceless heirloom I had no business bumping.So if you decide to watch, be ready to accept that the Gondry family is important enough to spend 84 minutes learning about. Devoid of Michel's usual creative visuals and surrealistic storytelling, this film is a very flat documentary. If the subject doesn't immediately entice you, then you're outta luck. Unless of course you manage to drop a tab beforehand.

Switching, as he does, between music videos, documentaries and Hollywood pictures, Michel Gondry chose to focus on the life of his aunt Suzette for his latest documentary. Using his cousin's old Super 8 film footage, interviews, animation and the odd outtake that should have remained on the editor's floor, the story of Suzette's life as a teacher, moving from school to school across the 60s, 70s and 80s is told.Now, this is all very good, but why would anyone outside of the Gondry wider family have an interest in this story? This is where the faults creep in. The people involved in many of the stories are rarely introduced, leading the viewer to try and guess as to what relation each has to Gondry's aunt. This leads for quite a fractured and non-linear story, where the timeline has to be pieced together.But while the logistics are a little challenging, the more emotional side of the film's main focus, his cousin's relationship with his mother, Suzette, provide a more rewarding challenge. Probing into sensitive issues around the relationship of the pair, Gondry gives an insight unconventional family life and the issues that often remained untouched. It is perhaps Gondry's close relationship that allows him to delve into areas that an outside director would be unable to, though this closeness can also serve to alienate the viewer from those involved as the film becomes more and more personal.Using standard Gondry techniques, employing toy trains, animation and an unnecessary attempt at a music video, the documentary is put together with a light-hearted approach to some sensitive subjects. And indeed, The Thorn in the Heart is a nice, little piece into the director's family life. How important a documentary such as this is for a cinematic release is entirely up to you.www.politic1983.blogspot.com

1st things 1st : do not expect classic gondry's work. This is much different, in a personal way, a project he did finance himself, far away from any major studios. Back to his roots, family, Gondry films his ant and cousin. They share few secrets from the past which will come back because of the camera they have to deal with ; obviously, the camera that Gondry is using. Because it's a documentary about family, Gondry had all the confidence from his ant and cousin he could go and film them and picture the details and secrets they are having/sharing/hiding. It is very human, lot of scenes in the nature. I think Gondry needed to do this film for maybe his family but for him too, so he could remember where he is coming from (which I am sure he never forget) and do the most personal work ever.

You may be asking yourself, and not because you're insensitive but just because it strikes you, 'why is Michel Gondry, director of some of the most visually dazzling and original films of the last decade making some personal documentary about his Aunt and cousin and her time as a schoolteacher and so on?' I suppose, for one, since he damn well feels like it and has a strong bond (or just a strong interest) in his Aunt Suzette and learning more about her and showing her history to us. Whether the film is a home movie should be irrelevant, albeit Gondry makes his movie The Thorn in the Heart as some kind of weird statement on home movies (see how he leaves in the sound the camera makes when he shoots on 16mm) and their organic quality. What matters, ultimately, is if the people are interesting, and if the stories they tell gain our attention, and maybe if we know them a little more at the end or, at best, we want to spend some more time with them.Without going as far to say Gondry made a great personal documentary, he did succeed on those terms I just mentioned. After a short time (and not including a kind of in-jokey opening story at the dinner table with Suzette laughing every other minute), we get into the story of this woman, Michel's Aunt, who lives in a rural village in France, and taught as a schoolteacher, raising her two children (her son, Jean-Yves, gets more time than the daughter, though she is mentioned and perhaps is on screen from time to time), and just living in a town like she did and the places she taught at. Gondry takes his small film crew to film some of these places, now mostly demolished or turned into homes, and he even goes to a rather touching extent of making up a projection room and screens a film (as used to be the place at the old school).Sometimes these stories Suzette, now old and almost if not completely blind, are really amusing and just completely down to earth. We also hear about those she took care of, like Jean-Yves, and about his coming out of the closet (this is talked about in such a matter of fact, or just uncomplicated, way that it's sobering and heartfelt), and about when she took care of her grandkids (or maybe it was another third-generation 12 year old kid) in New York City for a year in 2005 or 2006. Some of these details could be made clearer, but it's hard to look at that as a big bad against the movie when Gondry takes such care in giving her time to speak, clearly, and go through the pages and other things in memory. Indeed the film reminded me of that wonderful film of his, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as a person looks through the myriad of memories, good and bad, and a train set (one of which that Jean-Yves might have made in his day as a hobby) is used as a transition device from year to year from the 1950s to the 1980's.One of the bad memories that comes to light is the circumstances surrounding the death of Suzette's husband very suddenly in the 70's. She found out on a Monday and didn't tell her kids until two days later (she gives a reason as one of them had very important exams and would be completely devastated - the other one, Jean-Yves, was devastated, and it led to his nervous breakdown some time later). She tells this with great sorrow but as a fact of what happened; Suzette misses her husband, but at the same time is philosophical about death. "I only think about it because I know it's coming soon," she says in narration as she walks through a graveyard. So moments like these, for Michel, are as important as those lighthearted reveries and glances through old photo albums with a friend.There are dark corridors of the past explored, but Gondry isn't going so far as, for example, Zwigoff's film on Crumb. He has too much imagination and an eye for joy that it's just not possible to be too gloomy. He loves this woman and hopes that if we don't love her by the end (and she's for the most part just a painfully normal grandmother, probably nicer than most old people or more understanding from being a teacher), we can admire her. It's on that strength alone I would recommend the film, but there are other little moments that will delight fans of Gondry's work. He throws in some stop-motion animation here and there, and is interested in the splitting up of footage and stock (digital to archive footage to 16mm) as we see a "home movie" being made in front of us.But best of all is a random but inspired scene where he gets a bunch of schoolchildren who've been doing a Q&A with Suzette to put on Chroma-Key shirts and pants (these are the same thing as green-screen), and what we see is floating heads and torsos and little legs playing in the room and the yard. It's moments like these that make me smile in the movies, even if there is no real precise reason it should be in this story of Suzette's at all. 7.5/10