The play's the thing

Awhile ago I wrote a post about how I hate movies that try to start movements (e.g., Pay it Forward and Be Kind Rewind). Turns out that Be Kind Rewind was indeed an attempt to create a movement. Gondry's "You'll love this film because you're in it: the Be Kind Rewind protocol" is a slim book in which Gondry provides a game-like, algorithmic approach to DIY filmmaking. It's all very sincere but shows why Be Kind Rewind was so problematic. Not only was it created using some of these strategies; it wanted to encourage people to go out and make their own videos. That was the problem with Be Kind Rewind. It made its characters subservient to its meaning. Art usually doesn't turn out too well when it has an overriding agenda. As they say, "the play's the thing."

PS. Click here to visit the Pay it Forward foundation.