Courtney Martin thought Michel Gondry's Be Kind, Rewind was a great commentary on the role of creativity in forging community:
Everything about the Jersey town where Be Kind, Rewind takes place is dying and decrepit. The viewer has the sense from the very start that the townspeople are doomed to lose. The moneyed developers' invasion appears inevitable. Corporate, Hollywood jerks (led by the frigid and funny Sigourney Weaver) show up demanding that the homemade videos be destroyed because of copyright violations (or else Jerry and Mike will be charged with fines with too many zeroes to count). And then there's the ridiculous task at hand of recreating the store's entire video library.But in the end, it is the townspeople's commitment to one another, their tenacious creativity, their joy and spontaneity, that actually makes the lightening-speed march into the future -- the focus on money and legality and technology -- irrelevant. They win because they're not even playing the game of uber-American consumption and competition. They're just hanging out, imagining, and creating. Having a good communal laugh. In the end, it is this creativity, kindness, and community that really matter.
Read the rest and comment here. --The Editors
