"What dust we dote on, when 'tis man we love"
1 rating since posting on Monday, August 30, 2004|
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A review of: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind The movie is grainy and raw. And the cast of characters, which is celebrity packed, gets to display their very real and formidable talents. The style is understated but clearly Shakespearean. The movie is, at its most simple, about getting a second chance. Its spin on this ancient yearning is to turn the clocks back and yet remain in possession of the insights gained from the first attempt. If I was inclined to be bitter or cynical, I?d say it tries to eat its cake twice and still have it. But I?m romantically inclined, and somewhat idealistic. Two lost, alone, and mildly cynical 30-somethings find each other. Their relationship has real potential, though the coupling is admittedly odd if not unlikely. But their relationship falls apart as a result of neither of them having the capacity to work on themselves or the relationship. Stagnation, disillusionment, and finally disaffectation send Clementine (Kate Winslet) to a clinic to have Joel (Jim Carrey) and her time with him up to this point erased from her memory. In despair over his loss, Joel has the clinic perform the same procedure. Much of the film (at least half? I lost track of time) is focused on Joel?s unconscious struggle during the procedure to resist the erasure. At first his unconscious tries to rise to the conscious, tries to wake him up, but when that doesn?t work, he seeks to relocate memories of Clementine, and thus protect them, by associating them with memories she has nothing to do with. Most of this requires him going back to childhood, while others involve trying to rewrite experiences they shared together. (I?ll note here that, throughout the procedure, which takes place while Joel is sleeping in his apartment, the crew from the clinic is supposedly overseeing Joel?s memory erasure. In fact, they are preoccupied by their own crazy lives which are intertwined in bizarre ways. The chaos of the fumbled orchestrations of the technicians and doctor rises to a cacophonous pitch despite the fact that something is going terribly wrong with their patient.) While the film focuses on Joel and not on Clementine, it is apparent that, at least on some level, she too has retained some vestigial memories; for the two meet, as if by accident, at the beach where first they met. (In a conventional but effective structural decision, this is where the film begins.) The dramas of the clinic-crew unravel and rise up from the almost comic subplot to merge with the main plot (and thus cloak the god in the machine). The result is that both Joel and Clementine handily fall into possession of their patient files, complete with the audio tape interview they took prior to the procedure, in which they recount their partners? faults and failings?presumably as both testimony and justification for initiating the forgetting. If I was prone to psychoanalytic readings, I?d say that the clinic-crew subplot recapitulates and thus symbolizes Joel?s unconscious. Certainly, its resolution realizes Joel?s deepest desire to remember his time with Clementine (Mary, one of the clinic workers, has decided that what they are doing is wrong, and has, in effect, therefore returned all the clients? memories to them). But I?m not prone to such readings. Instead, I see the subplot as a counterpoint to the main plot. In this capacity, it comments on it. The subplot attempts to prevent our mistakenly interpreting the film as saying that our deep loves are somehow merely a matter of timing and circumstance. (Since Patrick could not deploy Joel?s words to replicate the loving responses in Clementine, we are forced to conclude that Clementine?s love for Joel transcended the mere signs of Joel?s affection connecting with some essence that is Joel himself. Clementine?s reaction to Patrick giving her the gift that, unbeknownst to her, Joel had picked out, clumsily attempted to emphasize this message.) If the subplot succeeds in this regard, we are left with the more appealing notion that our deepest bonds transcend vicissitudes and contingencies. What the film does especially well for me is handle the ending. The dynamic between the bewildered yet enamored couple is nuanced, touching, and funny. The characters are still themselves, yet somehow register the wisdom derived from the experiences and memories supposedly erased from their minds. Ultimately, the message that emerges is that we enjoy the time we have and appreciate the beauty of those fleeting, precious moments we have together. Othello?s words to Desdemona reverberate through the film, and even as they celebrate the eternal bliss of the too few, perfect moments we?re given, they nevertheless foreshadow the loss and forgetting that will ultimately consume it all. ?If it were now to die, / ?Twere now to be most happy ?? (2.1.182-183). If it seems odd that I don?t discuss the film?s views on memories, its because I don?t think the film is really at all about memory. I think its preoccupied with the search for the soul of love. - Unsubscribed , posted 08/30/04 |
