Film Review: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Set aside everything that you look for in a movie. Don’t you just *love* the title of the movie? ‘The long, dark tea-time of the soul’, ‘Catcher in the Rye’, ‘The winter of our discontent’, ‘The General in his labyrinth’, how the fuck do people come up with names of such endearing, enduring beauty?!
Ok, enough gushing about the title. Let me move on. The scriptwriter (yeah, for this particular movie/theme he’s the man, not the director…) is Charlie Kaufman (of ‘Being John Malkovich’ and ‘Adaptation’ fame). Unfortunately I’ve been unable to get hold of either of these movies but I heard a heckuva lot about them and eagerly lapped this movie up. And I was richly rewarded for the same.
In a nutshell, the movie tries to give us a glimpse into the incredibly complex inner workings of a mind. It performs this seemingly humongous task by telling us a story which has at least three discernible (to me) layers to it. At the surface, it is the story of Joel (Jim Carrey) who’s trying to come to terms with his break-up with Clementine (Kate Winslet). In the depths of his agony, he finds out from a common friend that Clem has had her memory of Joel systematically erased through a scientific process patented by a company called Lacuna Inc. (the movie is so beautiful that I’m sure you will have it in your heart to grant Kaufman the privilege of suspending your disbelief). He can’t take the depression anymore and decides to go for this operation himself.
At a level only marginally under the surface, the movie works as a comedy with the characters very lovingly etched. But at the core of the movie is the deeper third layer which puts a metaphysical spin on the story. A significant chunk of the movie dwells on the actual deletion of each of the memories of Clem that Joel has in his mind (the science of the process has something to do with creating a map of Clem by scanning Joel’s mind after he’s shown gifts/photos/things that remind him of her, and his responses registered…and deleting this map overnight). Somewhere during the process, Joel decides that this whole deletion business was a bad idea to start with but alas, he can’t stop it now because he’s comatose while the system is performing the deletion. Comedy collides with metaphysics as Joel desperately tries to beat the system while being under its influence.
There are some surprises and beautiful moments along the way but I don’t want to spoil it for you by revealing them here. The ethics of such an operating procedure and the people involved in it could be thought of as another issue that the movie dwells on, but it was never about that. It was really about how incredibly complex human relationships are. And it’s a commendable achievement to concoct a story that captures these complex inner workings of a mind, let alone two minds that want to have a relationship! My only grouse was with the ending which i found a tad disappointing, but its probably just urs cynically.
Ok, enough gushing about the title. Let me move on. The scriptwriter (yeah, for this particular movie/theme he’s the man, not the director…) is Charlie Kaufman (of ‘Being John Malkovich’ and ‘Adaptation’ fame). Unfortunately I’ve been unable to get hold of either of these movies but I heard a heckuva lot about them and eagerly lapped this movie up. And I was richly rewarded for the same.
In a nutshell, the movie tries to give us a glimpse into the incredibly complex inner workings of a mind. It performs this seemingly humongous task by telling us a story which has at least three discernible (to me) layers to it. At the surface, it is the story of Joel (Jim Carrey) who’s trying to come to terms with his break-up with Clementine (Kate Winslet). In the depths of his agony, he finds out from a common friend that Clem has had her memory of Joel systematically erased through a scientific process patented by a company called Lacuna Inc. (the movie is so beautiful that I’m sure you will have it in your heart to grant Kaufman the privilege of suspending your disbelief). He can’t take the depression anymore and decides to go for this operation himself.
At a level only marginally under the surface, the movie works as a comedy with the characters very lovingly etched. But at the core of the movie is the deeper third layer which puts a metaphysical spin on the story. A significant chunk of the movie dwells on the actual deletion of each of the memories of Clem that Joel has in his mind (the science of the process has something to do with creating a map of Clem by scanning Joel’s mind after he’s shown gifts/photos/things that remind him of her, and his responses registered…and deleting this map overnight). Somewhere during the process, Joel decides that this whole deletion business was a bad idea to start with but alas, he can’t stop it now because he’s comatose while the system is performing the deletion. Comedy collides with metaphysics as Joel desperately tries to beat the system while being under its influence.
There are some surprises and beautiful moments along the way but I don’t want to spoil it for you by revealing them here. The ethics of such an operating procedure and the people involved in it could be thought of as another issue that the movie dwells on, but it was never about that. It was really about how incredibly complex human relationships are. And it’s a commendable achievement to concoct a story that captures these complex inner workings of a mind, let alone two minds that want to have a relationship! My only grouse was with the ending which i found a tad disappointing, but its probably just urs cynically.
posted by CogitoErgoConfusum at 10/08/2004 04:14:00 AM
1 Comments:
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