Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I apologize if you haven't seen it, because the next paragraph is probably not going to make much sense.
I can't believe I hadn't seen this movie until now. A sentimentalist like me. I liked it. A lot. I mean, aside from agreeing with the lesson that erasing someone's painful memories wouldn't be the easy right answer; aside from the two leads which had amazing chemistry and the well-done production which used effects without feeling trite; and apart from the sheer "what the hell just happened". Something through this made me quite sad and also grateful. I'm guessing it might have to do with the connections of memory-loss and life-loss. And loneliness. Joel's re-imagining the beach-house with Clem, forcing himself to reinvent a memory he could keep, with her in it- felt like a fairly major assertion about the best of our stubbornness, fighting giving in to despair. And again the motif of learning something different this time around the loop, this time regarding relationships revisiting the same emotional ground again.
So, what did you think of it?...
Ironically, after I rented this but before I watched it, dan and I were talking about what to do with ephemera such as old audio tapes. So my plan was to go through my box of cassette tapes and decide whether I need to send my mix tapes off to these folks to record them digitally at ~$6 a tape. I got far enough to realize I kinda didn't have the wherewithal to deal with that at the same time as watching the movie.
I can't believe I hadn't seen this movie until now. A sentimentalist like me. I liked it. A lot. I mean, aside from agreeing with the lesson that erasing someone's painful memories wouldn't be the easy right answer; aside from the two leads which had amazing chemistry and the well-done production which used effects without feeling trite; and apart from the sheer "what the hell just happened". Something through this made me quite sad and also grateful. I'm guessing it might have to do with the connections of memory-loss and life-loss. And loneliness. Joel's re-imagining the beach-house with Clem, forcing himself to reinvent a memory he could keep, with her in it- felt like a fairly major assertion about the best of our stubbornness, fighting giving in to despair. And again the motif of learning something different this time around the loop, this time regarding relationships revisiting the same emotional ground again.
So, what did you think of it?...
Ironically, after I rented this but before I watched it, dan and I were talking about what to do with ephemera such as old audio tapes. So my plan was to go through my box of cassette tapes and decide whether I need to send my mix tapes off to these folks to record them digitally at ~$6 a tape. I got far enough to realize I kinda didn't have the wherewithal to deal with that at the same time as watching the movie.