When I first saw The Science of Sleep, I didn’t really know what to make of it. It was the fall of 2006 and I was living in Chicago, so my then-new romantic interest and I went to see it at an arty theater in the city’s North Center neighborhood. I had become obsessed with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry’s breakthrough in feature filmmaking, about a year before that. But given the fact that it took over a year for me to get hooked on that one, it seems I should have expected the same of Science. Yet somehow I still left the theater feeling let down — or maybe the ending was just so melancholy that the film’s strengths were temporarily diminished.

At the time the character Stéphane Miroux (played by the always impressive Gael García Bernal) appeared to be a wildly creative soul, perhaps borderline schizophrenic, but a good person at the core — one seeking true romance above all else. Just as with Eternal Sunshine, it took about a 12-month lapse for me to really appreciate Science. I stopped hoping for resolution and just accepted the characters for what they are: defective homo sapiens. I saw in my own unconscious mind the same blurred line between reality and unreality that Stéphane experienced. It made me think of my youth, when I was profoundly affected by random but terrifying segments on TV shows, more so than anything I encountered in my day-to-day life. (Just off the top off my head, I remember traumatizing scenes in Thirtysomething and The Facts of Life. No wonder I don’t have cable TV anymore…)

Stéphane’s coworkers don’t understand his bizarre and darkly humorous idea for a calendar – which depicts various tragic events in a theme he calls “Disasterology” – and instead of encouraging his creativity, they banish him to a tedious typography machine.

Stéphane must also recognize how television has influenced his personal development, since he imagines himself running a TV show each night as he’s falling asleep. Once the soup of his daily experience is well cooked, his dreams can commence. In a way it reflects the fact that people now interact (or feel like they interact) with others on screens more often than face to face. When I say “feel like they interact,” I mean that even watching TV sort of creates the illusion that one is with those people — hanging out, talking, having fun.*

More than anything, Stéphane’s struggle seems related to his inability to cope with the simultaneous boredom and absurdity of the adult world. He works on crafty projects in his apartment, rarely seeing anyone except for his neighbor and crush, Stéphanie (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg). Stéphane’s coworkers don’t understand his bizarre and darkly humorous idea for a calendar – which depicts various tragic events in a theme he calls “Disasterology” – and instead of encouraging his creativity, they banish him to a tedious typography machine. He’s in Paris, but only speaks some French, and it seems part of his manic tendencies arise from the alternation between spoken French and English, and his own Spanish internal monologue.

Stéphane doesn’t seem any more able to convince Stéphanie to consider him romantically than he is able to convince himself that he actually likes her. In that regard they each act like preteens, not even sure what they’re looking for in a partner, unaware of how to pursue some kind of romantic engagement with the person. That’s appropriate, since Stéphane is staying in his childhood bedroom – still full of all his youthful trinkets – and he seems to have regressed to a pre-pubescent state. Stéphane also disapproves of his mother’s new boyfriend, perhaps only because of her constant absence. After all, Stéphane flew to France specifically to stay with his mother.

And that brings me to my most recent realization about the film. It’s really easy to forget that Stéphane’s father has just died. We hear something about this during the psychedelic opening credits, a dream sequence in which Stéphane thinks he’s talking to his dad about Duke Ellington. Stéphane travels to Paris from his home in Mexico to be with his mother, but she provides no comfort — maybe because she’s romantically preoccupied, or maybe because she’s in denial about the death of her ex-husband. Stéphane’s mother has at least lined up a job for him in Paris, but she tells him it’s a creative job when it’s actually a pretty standard office job. He arrives to find out his role is no different than any copy machine slave in any small business in any old town in post-industrial Western civilization.

Because there’s not much mention of Stéphane’s father after the intro, the fact that Stéphane is mourning likely eludes the viewer — that is, unless the viewer has gone through a similar experience. I’m not referring only to the death of a loved one; there’s a whole array of experiences that could disrupt one’s entire existence. I didn’t relate to Stéphane’s plight until the fall of 2009. I was preparing for my girlfriend (the same romantic interest from Chicago) to leave the country in order to attend vet school. I felt I had to prepare myself for the worst-case scenario: not seeing her for up to four years, or the termination of our relationship. It was possibly the most unhinged I’ve ever felt in my life. I’ve hurt worse, for certain. This was different; it wasn’t defined by pain so much as by the degree of separation from reality — but reality as perceived by the majority of “normal” adults.

In effect this experience was not unlike Stéphane’s mourning process. If someone on whom your sense of reality is founded suddenly vanishes, the cause for his or her disappearance matters little. Likewise, there’s barely any difference between a break up and what I’m going through. My girlfriend is intent on trying to stay together, and I’m willing to give a sincere attempt. We’re assisted by technology in that regard. She has a landline in her dorm routed through the U.S. phone system, she has a cell phone on the island with which we can exchange text messages, and we each have webcams, wifi, and Skype accounts for free video chatting. But using Skype almost makes me feel uneasy, like my brain can’t quite make sense out of it. It’s like talking with a ghost, someone who has simply ceased to exist. All my knowledge of the world comes through the senses, and she is absent from my sensory input right now.

I suppose the one main difference between Stéphane’s situation and my own is the issue of life and death – more precisely, that I was able to prepare for the change before it happened. She was accepted to vet school in July 2009, and that’s when I started mourning her, as if she was going to die on January 2, 2010. As the months progressed, my emotional tolerance dwindled to the point that I was crying multiple times per week. I avoided social situations more than normal, and I quickly bolted from the ones I did attend: the Halloween party on Huron Street, my girlfriend’s going away party at Connor O’Neill’s, and others. Then I spent a large part of Christmas Eve in a bedroom with a glass of Malbec and only two dogs for company, reading Kerouac with Coltrane’s My Favorite Things warming the air.

I’m submitting to the notion that I am all I’ll ever be, that I’m the same as I’ve always been. And any new aspect that arises will only be something freshly illuminated, something that once existed in darkness — but existed nonetheless.

The strangest thing about last fall was a sudden sensation that I was living inside Michel Gondry’s head. Or to put it differently, it felt that I had been propelled into what seemed to be a visionary experience — pushed beyond all comprehension and toleration of real life, shoved deeper and deeper into my own psyche. This feeling wasn’t new to me, but the degree of severity was – like I had been preparing for this moment for the past four years. There’s no simpler way to describe it than to say it felt like I was losing my mind. I wondered, Is the Universe toying with me? Is a greater force attempting to nudge me over the edge? After all, I myself had considered attending the same foreign vet school four years prior, but decided against it for a variety of reasons. When I turned from that path I was hoping for little more than a fulfilling romance and a creatively satisfying job. Yet Fate continues to taunt me, like a cruel boy kicking a dog in the street. (Of course some of my current frustration likely has to do with my increasingly urgent biological drive to impregnate a woman, to father a child. We men are but sperm banks…)

My girlfriend left in early January, and despite the relief I felt for being excused from that torturous whirlwind of emotions, I was suddenly overcome by a sadness brought on, undoubtedly, by extreme isolation. I can’t get any footing whatsoever outside of my apartment, and the longer that goes on, the more I will regress inward. I’ll fill my apartment with trinkets and toys, colorful lights and simulated fog — fuel for the imagination. In a way I’m looking forward to it. There’s nothing I can devise in here that would surpass the insanity and horror I’ve found out there. For once in quite some time, I feel content — not with the world or with people or with my surroundings, but content with myself. Whatever creative work I do from this point forward will be done foremost in an effort to learn myself and, in a broader sense, humanity. Nothing given to me would ever justify the work — no money or attention or awards. I’m prepared to ride the lightning that sparks between my neurons and the netherworld, though at times I’ll surely feel the burn. I’m submitting to the notion that I am all I’ll ever be, that I’m the same as I’ve always been. And any new aspect that arises will only be something freshly illuminated, something that once existed in darkness — but existed nonetheless.

Yet I can’t escape that creeping gloom, the aching feeling that it would all be more worthwhile if someone could dive right into my unconscious and share the ride. It’s the same sentiment Stéphane expressed when he said, “I want to see Stéphanie in my dreams.” He had a world of endless fascination at his disposal, but ultimately he had as little control over that internal world as he had over the outer one. It brings to mind a quote from Aldous Huxley, which I found recently in The Doors of Perception: “We live together, we act on, and react to, one another, but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. [...] Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. [...] From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.”

Stéphane never really comes to terms with that concept – nor, apparently, does Michel Gondry.

It makes me wonder what is required in order to press on, to overcome the stop gates of the status quo that easily corral the babbling majority. I’m talking specifically about someone like Stéphane, who endures nightmarish fits brought on by the daily pummeling offered by the “real world.” What fuels the absurd creator (as Camus called such a man) is not hope or faith; those are irrelevant. It seems to be more a matter of submission and endurance — submission to the forces that govern the internal world, and endurance to explore it with the same zest that drives humanity to explore new continents, oceans, and outer space. Perhaps in some unimagined sequel to The Science of Sleep, we’d see Stéphane relishing in his isolation, a steadfast commander of his own vessel, swerving through the infinite expanses of his own unconscious universe. Or maybe not. I can’t rule out the factor of French pessimism here (a factor that we Americans try to deny in our own cultural makeup), but I feel like one of the most extraordinary film directors of our time should be exempt from such an affliction. If Gondry himself hasn’t achieved an equilibrium of consciousness, maybe that goal is open to even fewer than I ever imagined. Or even worse, perhaps no one ever reaches it.

But that doesn’t stop us from trying.

*This concept of the illusion of company is borrowed from David Foster Wallace’s essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction,” which I found in the collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.

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