Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Love it or hate it, you can't deny that this movie asks some really interesting questions. If we could erase hurtful memories, would we? And if someone somehow managed to erase all of the pain in his past, what would be left of him as a person?
Without getting too bogged down in logistics, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman introduces the technique of memory erasure as a mundane procedure. Not only is it possible and practical in this story, but also honed to the point that it can be done overnight in one's own home. Technicians sneak in at night and zap portions of your brain with the offending memories, and then steal away before you wake up, presumably to preserve the illusion. (I wondered how the company explains the charges for memory erasure in this case, but those are the logistics I mentioned.)
Joel (Jim Carrey), a nebbishy loner, discovers that his extroverted girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has had him erased from her memories, and so he exacts a sort of revenge by having her expunged from his brain. Their friends are all mailed little cards asking them not to mention the relationship ever again. The doctor and the technicians he employs become involved in the story in a number of tangled ways, but the real complications set in when Joel decides, mid-procedure, that he would like to keep his memories of Clementine after all.
The chronology of the film is as maze-like as the corners of Joel's psyche in which he tries to hide Clementine from the lasers (?) that hunt her, but that is part of the appeal. By the time we really understand what's going on, it is in part because we've been yanked around as much as Joel has. It's not always a pleasant process; I walked out of the movie not much liking any of the characters, including Joel, but after some time I have decided that I do like the film's message, and the way that message was presented.
Still I come back to lingering questions of the logistics of the procedure. One particularly disturbing aspect of the treatment is a ripple effect -- some older memories must be wiped out because they become connected to the newer ones. Not just the memories that Joel uses to hide Clementine, but also his entire memory of the song "Oh My Darling Clementine" and the fact of a beloved childhood Huckleberry Hound doll. Without key pieces of his past like these, is Joel the same person? And what about those memories that we don't retain in the natural course of our lives? What kinds of people would we be if we still had them?
Without getting too bogged down in logistics, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman introduces the technique of memory erasure as a mundane procedure. Not only is it possible and practical in this story, but also honed to the point that it can be done overnight in one's own home. Technicians sneak in at night and zap portions of your brain with the offending memories, and then steal away before you wake up, presumably to preserve the illusion. (I wondered how the company explains the charges for memory erasure in this case, but those are the logistics I mentioned.)
Joel (Jim Carrey), a nebbishy loner, discovers that his extroverted girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has had him erased from her memories, and so he exacts a sort of revenge by having her expunged from his brain. Their friends are all mailed little cards asking them not to mention the relationship ever again. The doctor and the technicians he employs become involved in the story in a number of tangled ways, but the real complications set in when Joel decides, mid-procedure, that he would like to keep his memories of Clementine after all.
The chronology of the film is as maze-like as the corners of Joel's psyche in which he tries to hide Clementine from the lasers (?) that hunt her, but that is part of the appeal. By the time we really understand what's going on, it is in part because we've been yanked around as much as Joel has. It's not always a pleasant process; I walked out of the movie not much liking any of the characters, including Joel, but after some time I have decided that I do like the film's message, and the way that message was presented.
Still I come back to lingering questions of the logistics of the procedure. One particularly disturbing aspect of the treatment is a ripple effect -- some older memories must be wiped out because they become connected to the newer ones. Not just the memories that Joel uses to hide Clementine, but also his entire memory of the song "Oh My Darling Clementine" and the fact of a beloved childhood Huckleberry Hound doll. Without key pieces of his past like these, is Joel the same person? And what about those memories that we don't retain in the natural course of our lives? What kinds of people would we be if we still had them?
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