eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

[rone]

Kim and i just saw it. It is a lovely, wonderful movie. It's a journey into relationships gone wrong and their aftermath; it examines the horrible things we do and say when we know that the relationship is running off the rails, and how true they feel regardless of how true they are. It made me think about the malleability of memory (which i reëxamined while my parents were visiting recently for palecur's 30th birthday; Mom & Dad would remind me of stuff which i either remembered incorrectly or not at all), and about the risks we take with allowing intimacy. It shows that mental anæsthesia's no good if you've not dealt with the root of the pain. Kate Winslet as Joel's babysitter had a total Illeana Douglas vibe going. Elijah Wood hit the right note as the creepy, desperate nerd. Everyone was really good. From a technical perspective, the movie captures exactly the disorienting feeling of being in a dream where the setting is familiar but things don't behave correctly. It's the first movie since "Shakespeare In Love" that i wanted to see again as soon as it was over.

Comments

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

I really liked it too, and considering how much I loathe Jim Carrey, that's saying something. And why is it that British actors typically do such a wonderful job playing Americans, but not vice-versa? It is a puzzlement. I enjoyed seeing Elijah in a role that didn't require hairy prosthetic feet. Does Kirsten Dunst have a contractual requirement to dance around in her skivvies in every film she's in?

As we learn more about how human memory actually works, it has some sobering implications for a lot of fields of human endeavor: politics, spirituality, history, etc.

"What is truth?" -Pontius Pilate