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

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

*Michel Gondry (director) *Charlie Kaufmann (writer) *108m *2004 *


This is a film built around the idea of "targeted memory erasure", the eradication of some specific things in our life we would like to completely forget about. Joel (Jim Carrey), the hero, is undergoing this procedure to forget all about his affair with Clementine (Kate Winslet), who has earlier got the same thing done to herself vis-a-vis Joel. Joel is a dazed inwardly drifter and Clementine an insecure self pushing and over expressive woman, and their interaction provides comic fare of the tired and sickly kind. They are mentally fractured to start with, in little need of further injury which they seek to self-inflict through the aforesaid procedure. The staff of Lacuna Corporation, which has discovered the erasure technique, in their inept and callous handling of the "subject", provide material for a couple of sniggers, as well as the only solid ground in a film which never finds it's own feet in the precarious crumbling quicksands of the subconscious. For the better part of the film, Joel is lying on the couch, capped with a helmet with electrodes leading to a computer. The film itself probes his mind ricocheting back and forth in time, and we see a salad of his. memories, dreams and fantasies. The main characters themselves are adult size babies, self centered pleasure seekers who are conspicuously unsuccessful in finding the satisfactions they seek. They seem to be like floating weeds adrift in a murky pond. The pettiness to which life is reduced is one of the big problems of our times.

The film would probably need a second view for a more informed analysis but one wonders whether there are any meanings to be discovered. It will cater to those who love complexity for it's own sake. It is befuddling without being profound. It appeals as little to the mind as to the heart.

The caverns of the mind are dark and frightening but the film certainly does not see any lamp to illuminate this darkness. It is yet another litany of despair, lacking even in melancholy relief.

The nicest thing in the movie is the title, taken from Alexander Pope. And it's the only thing with a bit of sunshine in it.
Roger Ebert's review
NY Times review by Elvis Mitchell
Review: Todd McCarthy