16/09/2007 “ROBOTS ON A QUEST TO BECOME HUMAN”? WE WANTED DAFT PUNK’S DEBUT FEATURE FILM, ELECTROMA, TO BE A GRAND FOLLY OF PRETENSION AND HUBRIS – BUT THEN WE SAW IT AND REALISED THEY WERE PROBABLY GENIUSES. GUY-MANUEL DE HOMEM-CHRISTO EXPLAINED TO MICHAEL LEWIN WHY CHALLENGING THEMSELVES WAS MORE IMPORTANT THAN LITTLE THINGS LIKE DIALOGUE. AND NARR ATIVE. AND PEOPLE. AND THEIR OWN MUSIC.
One thing Notion was often fond of speculating with regards Daft Punk was why they seemed so desperate to escape the magnificent constraints of humanity. They perfor m as robots. In their music, they generally eschew all those instruments associated with earthly tones, and instead, from bleeps and beats, force our bodies to contort in unnatural dance moves more suited to cyborgs in a seemingly aggressive demand that we negate our God-derived physiques and attain un-humanity. Then, we realised they were French and so well within their birth right to be contrarily and unnecessarily pretentious; and so, rather than declaim them heretics and demand their barbequing, decided to chuckle along with them when they called their third record Human After All. ‘Touché,’ we thought, ‘kudos and, indeed, olé.’
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 Then we heard that they’d decided to make a film about robots on a quest to become human, the opaquely-named Electroma, and thought that maybe the boys Bangalter and de Homem-Christo might have taken the whole thing a bit too far; it seemed self-regarding and pretentious beyond even the nortorious standards of the French. Nevertheless, we found ourselves curiously excited – surely as deliciously hubristic an event as hitherto flawless musical pioneers coming a cropper in art house cinemas would be a perfect cure for the mundanity at the root of our midsummer madness? This, we thought, would be a clunking nonsense, a chance to turn the legs of idols into clay!—
But, alas, BOOM! went our mean-spirited intentions on first viewing; instead of pleasure taken at the fall of former greats, we were confronted with two chaps of distinction in need of a new challenge, brave enough to seek them out beyond the realm of the familiar. Electroma is a considered, meditative affair, occasionally moving, often infuriating but undoubtedly worthwhile. The film is laudable because it is neither the superfluous act of bored rich men nor a gratituitous exercise in ego – the two most likely results of musicians branching out. It turns out schadenfreude wasn’t to be our midsummer medicine in this instance – rather, it was humility. We were indeed right about one thing though: Thomas and Guy-Man are French to their very core.
“We don’t expect that this is a film for everyone,” Guy-Man justifies when I remark that the film is perhaps a little difficult for the majority of their pilled-up stadium rocking audiences, “but there are some people who have tears in their eyes.” Certainly, there is a fair deal of emotion - but to say the emotion is obfuscated is to understate the issue somewhat...
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It’s fortunate that the Punks are quite wealthy: we can barely imagine them begging for Hollywood gold. “So, famous musicians, tell me about your film...”
“Well, two robots are given human faces which then melt and then they walk through the desert for forty minutes, before committing suicide in different ways. Also, there is no dialogue. And we’re not using our music.” “Come again?
Actually, don’t. Leave.” Oddly, it is in fact the most objectionable qualities of Electroma which make it so impressive, so worthwhile an enterprise for these kings of dance. Still, we felt there were questions that had to be asked. First: why the hell are you making films, oh Guy-Man?
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“We decided to make the film because it was a natural continuity from what we were doing with the first album, just having fun and not caring about any rules or what existed. It is a very free approach that represents our creative process. With the first album and its music videos, we were always taking care of the visual aspect as well as the music.” Consider the directors they’ve worked with as musicians: Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Roman Coppola amongst others. The latter is a member of Hollywood’s first family, the former two now at the fore-most edge of great indie-mainstream crossover cinema. That’s gotta be a boon, right?
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“Of course. On set with them, it was just like being little children watching them and trying to lear n from them, seeing the way their brain works. With Gondry, he is like a child too – but at the same time he is mathematical . Working with men like that is a very powerful experience.” Though Electroma might otherwise have been represented as a nihilistic exercise in audience endurance, there is such a child-like naievety and wonderousness to both the robots and imagery that it is impossible not to be charmed – a child robot with an ice cream that it can’t possibly consume dropping it in terror at a melting face? Delectable. A desert turning into a close-up of a vagina? So silly it’s lovely. These lighter touches, which season Electroma and undermine its weighty pretension, have at their root that childish desire to be irreverent - children’s only  redeeming feature, one that Electroma shares.
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Of course, one thing children have over the denizens of Electroma is the art of speech. So, you’ve got your existential-yet-whimsical road-trip plot, fine, y’know, we can accept that with a lightness of touch. But no fucking dialogue? “For us, the excitement of the project was in the challenge. With no dialogue, with no Director of Photography, it makes more of a challenge. Film can transmit emotion, and we wanted to make it harder to have emotion when you watch. The soundtrack is full of emotion – but no dialogue makes it harder.”
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By rights, such selfish reasoning should be grounds for vicious retribution on the behalf of the listless, increasingly infuriated viewer – but, rather, these are the very motives which we find praiseworthy and which catapult Daft Punk into an exclusive canon of pop artists with the right to lay claim to that second word “artist”. Bangalter acted as DP himself, and prepared by reading 200 old volumes of American Cinematographer. He rose to this challenge exceptionally – the lensing of the film is perhaps its most sublime aspect. Shot on Kodak 35mm, a heresy in these technophiliac digital days, the barren, anonymous Californian wastes, which lend the film it’s setting, are captured in a majesterial, sun-bleached-bleak haze. Sudden focus pulls switch the eye’s allegiance and the heart’s sympathy between robots, while epic framing of the vast desert exemplifies the daunting loneliness and futility of their quest.
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For every challenging aspect which seems pretentious and wilful in conception, there’s another reason to enjoy Electroma. High-concept insanity like “Robots on quest to become human” is justified by method – as Guy-Man tells me, “robots aren’t human, they’re not supposed to give you emotion.” This is key – the Daft quest parallels that of the robots, where that goal of humanity is defined by the experience of emotion. The laudable challenges they set themselves, designed to obstruct the easy transmission of feeling (robots, no dialogue, etc) result in emotion achieved only when deserved, so all the more intense and fulfilling for it. A perfect example of this occurs when the two robots, having been given faces, discover these faces are melting and – pursued by robot townspeople – hide out in a public toilet. There, beneath flickering flourescent light, the more maudlin of the two (don’t ask how you know, but you do) undergoes an experience kin to a K-hole as he watches his dream of humanity literally disintegrate on his face to the suicidal folk tones of Sebastien Tellier. “Just music alone is emotional,” Guy-Man offers, “so what if you are looking at something which is completely unemotional? What does that do to the emotion?” Maudlin Robot is, at that moment, a more compellingly tragic figure than, say, De Niro reciting On The Waterfront into the mirror at the end of Raging Bull (well, almost).
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The prerogative of many a Parisien, Thomas and Guy-Man’s cineaste qualities permeate the film throughout – while some might compare equivalent desert follies like Van Sant’s Gerry and “Ego” Gallo’s Brown Bunny, the style of Russian genius Tarkovsky seems more apt – “Yes, we are both big fans of Tarkovsky; the films we love best are where the imagination is working twice as hard.” It is with such an idea that Electroma is best understood, best appreciated and hopefully enjoyed: “The whole movie is full of gaps the viewer can fill. The film gives room for the imagination to be put onto the screen.”
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Is Electroma for you? Let’s see. You! You’re eagerly anticipating the new Will Ferrell film. Well, piss off. But you! You’ve read books. You flirted with the idea there’s more to cinema than a continuous series of ever-greater explosions interspersed with grotesquely overdefined jaw-lines. If you can sit still for 70 minutes and keep your mind open, who knows? Perhaps, as Guy-Man hopes, you’ll shed a tear at the plight of a poor robot in an existential crisis.
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 The reason Electroma jolted me out of this debilitating Midsummer Madness, the reason I shan’t demand the heads of these chancing French charlatans on sticks for the criminal answer to the math problem “vanity + aspiration x pretension = ?” – the reason is that the sight of enquiring minds challenging themselves instead of taking the obvious path to money is a refreshing experience; and so their success becomes an inclusive pleasure. By setting themselves such obstacles and leaving emotion solely to music, they seem to be challenging the power of the medium they’ve found so much success in, questioning whether music is as grand a pursuit as they thought it thus far. I suggest this idea to Guy-Man; he responds with a nonplussed “er...non”. It would in fact appear that my pretentiousness out-weighs their ’s, forcing this article into a volte-face from it’s initial intent so fierce I may eat myself. Regardless, Electroma is such a sumptuous-looking, reflective mood-piece, successfully avoiding arsey theorising; it’s a delight for anyone wishing to join in, to challenge themselves as Daft Punk do the same.
ELECTROMA WAS SCREENED IN THE UK DURING JULY AND AUGUST
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