Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? An Animated Conversation With Noam Chomsky

Sometimes, a movie just gives you too much to deal with. So it is with Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? It’s a series of conversations between director Michel Gondry and Noam Chomsky, one of the foremost thinkers on a variety of subjects over the past half-century. So you have Chomsky talking linguistics, philosophy and politics, and you have Gondry, in his deeply affected English, not only asking questions but also adding monologue interludes between these interviews. On top of that, Gondry has animated every sequence, so instead of watching the conversations, you’re seeing a stream-of-consciousness animation that just flies by. It’s hard to concentrate on anything that’s going on here, and between the animation and the discussion—something should be the primary focus. It’s like you’re dreaming about the Intro to Philosophy class you slept through in college. Only weirder.