Michel Gondry interviews the famous American philosopher Noam Chomsky.

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When he decided to film the famous American philosopher Noam Chomsky, French director Michel Gondry refused to stick to the standard interview. To do Chomsky’s beautiful mind justice, he elected to use animation to illustrate the man’s complex ideas.

During the course of his films, Michel Gondry’s characteristics and weaknesses are confirmed by pain. After having missed his chance to make L'Ecume des jours as grandiose a film as Eternel Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the scatterbrained director baited his own trap with this ambitious but lame portrait of Noam Chomsky. After sitting through an hour and a half, it’s hard to say where Gondry wanted to go with these superficial discussions, which are both obscure and incomplete, incapable of shedding any light on the linguist’s ideas. The decision to animate the thoughts of the two men is very captivating for the eye, but begs the question: is the real subject of this documentary Michel Gondry? That would only be worse.