Postscript: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Seeing the formidable reputation and the overwhelming positive critical reaction (not to mention friends' opinion), I was induced to re-view the movie, particularly since I had admittedly failed to make much less than 100% sense of it the first time. At least I had definitely got the feeling that it was not quite my cup of tea.

It's reputation is either as a light comic romance or as a look at the workings of the mind using the pseudo-scientific ploy of induced selective amnesia. The sadness of losing one's memories is poignantly portrayed because loss of memories is a kind of death, whether one's own or other people's. The slow fading of good and bad incidents as synapses snap and neurons implode as good Dr. Murray presses the erase buttons, is a series of sad miniature deaths and it is mournfully captured. (Sorrow is perhaps Kaufmann's favourite emotion, going by the yet to come Synecdoche.) Ebert has aptly compared memory erasure to the tragedy that is Alzheimer's disease. (It is an interesting question whether complete erasure of the past is possible even in Alzheimer's or even in death. Theologies emphatically maintain otherwise.) The ending is indeed a ray, if not eternity, of sunshine. The couple have learnt from their suffering, accepting each other for what they are. They transcend superficialities of compatibility, travelling beyond crutches of  plastic surgery, cerbral or otherwise. They have discovered  human bonding at a deeper stratum. Perhaps love is after all an inner resolve to love. In that sense I would prefer, given a choice, to interpret the film, as a satire on over dependance on technology, rather than as a neurological masterpiece. The film concludes by people back on the saddle, where they need to be, and rightfully belong. And this conclusion is delicately wrought. (Maybe reading too much between the lines.)

It looks as though I have talked myself into liking the film, but there isn't a third time, because it's not my brand of caffeine (or is it now), though it places Synecdoche, a deeper film, which I have seen twice and written about once, squarely on the focus of my periscope sights.

And come to think of it, it's quite touching to see kids, even grown-up ones, moving away from the sad emptiness of their lives. Literary Dreamer Greg Salvatore is right about the triumphant note on which it concludes.

A vignette of worldly wisdom from Ebert: "The secret of communicating with another person, I suspect, may be in communicating with who he thinks he is. Do that, and you can kid a great man and treat an insignificant one with deep respect. They'll credit you with insight."
James Christopher's review