relationships

I have vivid memories of watching this at the cinema, especially the delayed opening credits and Beck’s “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime” arriving about 20 minutes in. A song I had no idea was coming. Its appearance and reprise at the end are moments that have stuck with me.

The nonlinearity isn’t as complicated as it first felt, but it still keeps repeat viewings interesting.

Above all, it’s just such a fucking good *film. *A story that could only work in cinema, and a beautiful collaboration from Gondry, Kaufman and Bismuth all at or near the height of their powers.

I started with misgivings. Games in other media typically don’t work very well. A few early, minor nitpicks: Zevin talks about ‘ground pounding’ in 1985’s Super Mario Bros., which might adequately describe the act of jumping on enemies but doesn’t acknowledge it as the specific term for an important part of Mario’s moveset much later in the series. But this isn’t a book about games; it uses games and the industry as vehicle and metaphor for exploring other things—pain and mortality, collaboration and relationships. It does so wonderfully. Strong recommendation.