Pencils Of Light

I have wanted to write a movie review for a very long time- for years actually.  In college, I dreamed about being Roger Ebert’s newest partner and arguing passionately for the film he just couldn’t understand.  Who am I trying to fool?  I still have that dream.

I couldn’t quite decide which movie should be the first movie I wrote about.  Should it be a favorite of mine like The Straight Story or Millions?  Or should I pick a movie new to theaters?  I decided to wait until a film moved me to write, compelled me to write.  After a year of waiting, I found that film:  Be Kind Rewind.  This exercise in the suspension of disbelief, this film within a film  (or perhaps VHS within a film is more apropos), is my choice for review number one.

Michel Gondry, writer and director of The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, brings the same deft hand to this tale of a Passaic, New Jersey video store called Be Kind Rewind.  What’s unique about this video store is that, in the days of iPod movie rentals and purchases, they still only have VHS tapes to rent.  “One dollar, one title, one night,” Mia Farrow’s Miss Falewicz reminds store manager Mike, played by Mos Def.  This cultural antique is about to become a faint memory as the store’s owner, Elroy Fletcher (Danny Glover) is given 60 days to bring the condemned property up to code or else face demolition to make way for a new and generic city property.

In order to gain perspective, or perhaps to avoid any and all perspectives about the impending end to his business, Fletcher reunites with fellow Fats Waller aficionados in the rail car in which Waller died.  Waller features prominently in the narrative because Fletcher has touted his business location as the birthplace of the jazz great and even features several Fats Waller films in the Be Kind Rewind inventory.

While away, Fletcher entrusts his store to manager Mike, with the simple request to not allow misfit Jerry (played perfectly by Jack Black) in the store.  We, as an audience, now that won’t happen, and wait for Jerry to enter and wreak the havoc Fletcher so feared.  After a freakish electrical mishap, Jerry enters the store and demagnetizes all of the VHS tapes, thereby rendering the store completely obsolete.  Farrow’s Falewicz arrives at the store to turn in her overdue copy of Driving Miss Daisy and quickly asks to rent Ghostbusters.  Asking her to wait until the next day, Mike buys enough time to try and find another VHS copy for Miss Falewicz.

As Mike’s time evaporates, necessity gives birth to the invention of a brand new type of film—the ‘Sweded’ adaptations of Mike and Jerry.  The 20-minute creation that is part Ghostbusters, part sci-fi amalgamation, becomes a hit with Falewicz’s family and friends. The next day the two men ‘create’ Rush Hour 2 for another Be Kind customer and suddenly Mike and Jerry are taking custom orders for their special version of Hollywood hits.

As an audience member, I yearned for the happy ending—that Mr. Fletcher would earn enough money via these remade movies to save his home and business from demolition.  But I knew the odds with these hapless heroes.  Enter the FBI and writ for 6300 years and prison, and every creation of Be Kind Rewind is destroyed in the street by a steamroller.  As Jerry and Mike continue to raise funds for Mr. Fletcher they realize that the thing no one can take from them is their own, original work.  They make a movie of their own and screen it for their adoring public, which also happens to be the cast and crew of their magnum opus.

Of the many things I enjoyed about this film, it was Gondry’s use and manipulation of the visual that was most intriguing.   The main menu of the DVD was fascinating to me.  It wasn’t the sharply composed images we’re used to with digital television and DVDs.  Instead it was that slightly blurry VHS image we couldn’t have been happier to view when it was the best we had.  That contrast in clarity highlights a change in our own clarity as people today.  We’re used to high-speed, high-quality, high-__________ for our entertainment, our food, our air—our everything.  Are we any better for it?  Are we as high quality as the high quality things we buy?  I don’t know.  But I do know that there was a gorgeous simplicity to the act of going to a video store and putting that clunky mess of plastic and magnetized tape into that machine that usually rested atop our televisions.  We heard it go in and at the end of the film, if we were kind, we would indeed rewind that tape.  Even now, I can hear the whir of the motors rewinding the images and dialogue that had just captivated me for the previous two hours, only to come to a halt when it reached the beginning.

For reminding me that there is a special magic to the movies, I appreciate Be Kind Rewind and all of those dusty VHS boxes on the bookshelf.  Perhaps I’ll fill this lazy afternoon with a whir from the past.

Grade:  A

Cast & Credits

Jerry: Jack Black
Mike: Mos Def
Mr Fletcher: Danny Glover
Miss Falewicz: Mia Farrow
Alma: Melonie Diaz
Lawyer: Sigourney Weaver

Official website:  http://www.bekindmovie.com