Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?

2013 "An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky"
7.1| 1h28m| en
Details

A series of interviews featuring linguist, philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky done in hand-drawn animation.

Director

Producted By

Partizan Films

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Reviews

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews
SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.
Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.
Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
ana-arist As deep as a saucer, Gondry take on the nature of human language is just a giant waste of time, both Chomsky's and ours. Gondry interviews one of the leading authorities on human language and he cannot think of better questions to ask him than "what makes you happy?" or "do you miss your dead wife?".If you're interested in Chomsky works, look somewhere else. If you happen to like Gondry - and want to maintain any respect for him - do yourself a favor and skip this movie.I understand some people appreciate Gondry lavish visual creativity (I usually do, too), but in this movie they cannot compensate for the fact the Gondry has no idea what his own movie is about (since he has no clue what Chomsky is talking about most of the time).
chijim70 I would have LOVED to hear a good film with some narration concerning Naom. Instead I got a constant annoying projector and misc sounds interrupting what was otherwise a potentially great film. The graphics were amateurish and often pointless. I felt it discounted from his responses more than enhancing them. I didn't see the point in the perpetual noise or randomly agitating the viewer with unnecessary sound. I'm not so schizophrenic I need perpetual noise in order to appreciate an otherwise potentially dry point. Not that I even think of Naom as dry! He's interesting and all that crud did was detract from his speaking or the ability to focus on it. You'd think you'd want to enhance what he is saying but this film does everything but. It just wasn't enjoyable . . . . . . . . . .
Tyler Owlglass This film should have come with a prominent warning label. It is more about the unintelligible filmmaker than about Chomsky. It ignores Chomsky's fascinating political persona, other than to allow him to briefly mention that he was in jail several times, without elaboration.Very little of Chomsky comes through, since about 98% of the visuals are animations and hard-to-read hand scrawled subtitles, and the interviewer/filmmaker, who talks a lot, has an cripplingly heavy French accent and badly mispronounces many words to the extent that they can't be comprehended at all. What immense irony -- a film about linguistics made by someone who can't use the language properly, yet insists on putting himself front-and-center, both verbally and visually.Chomsky, one of the towering intellectual giants and political philosophers of our time, deserves much better than this.
remembervhs One of the other reviews here is very negative. That review's author uses terms like "self- indulgent" to describe this film.That term is totally accurate. This movie is the definition of self-indulgence. A series of edited interviews is played while hand-drawn animations form and transform on the screen. That's the film. It sounds ridiculous.But it drew me in and captivated me. The topics range from linguistic theory, Noam Chomsky's views on various things, and musings about his childhood. Gondry's own thoughts and interpretations, also included, seemed to miss the mark fairly often. But I felt like Gondry's voice ended up adding something to the movie. He is someone trying to understand complex concepts: sometimes he gets it, sometimes it doesn't seem like he does. From what I've written so far, this movie may sound like a nightmare to you.However, the whole concept was so original, and the drawings were engaging and interesting - - like a hand-drawn kaleidoscope with patterns that change depending on the topic being discussed. Gondry's thick french accent might distract some viewers, but I found it intelligible (there are also hand-drawn "subtitles" when he speaks, although I found them harder to read than I did to understand Gondry's accent). Chomsky has always struck me as a compelling speaker. He is soft-spoken but knows his lines (speaking figuratively) and makes his points well.All in all a unique and surprisingly entertaining experience. 8/10