Blessed are the forgetful: For they get the better even of their blunders
Tonight is the last night in my apartment in Downers. I'm going to spend part of it writing an entry about my favorite movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and then I am going to pack up my computer and go to the next chapter of my life.
ESOTM is an adventure in the world of organic complexity that is the human mind, as being verifiable only by memories. And how memories are here one minute, be them good or bad, and then gone the next. It is a beautiful way of telling each and every one of you the simple truth that what you think is a bad memory of a relationship might have nothing to do with the other person, but it might have everything to do with how you see yourself and how you reacted to it at the time. It also reminds us of the fragility of what we have, and how some people in our lives could be inescapable by the force of consciousness, once we come into contact with them. It's almost as if the only things in our lives that are unchangeable are the people that change our lives. Some people think that destiny is real and it runs the world. But I think that destiny only exists in relationships with other people.
This movie was written by Charlie Kaufman. He is graciously humble and as talented as a son of a bitch with an uncanny knack of bringing movies to a level of a never-ending philosophical conversation, yet displaying the most complete stories ever. His movies are conversations with audiences, flawlessly providing complete experiences. The satisfaction people get from his stories make their experiences worth returning to, over and over again. Kaufman films are probably watched multiple times more than any other flicks out there besides maybe cult classics. There is a reason for that. Every time you watch a Kaufman film, you get something new, something else out of it. His films are like friends, actually. Something different every time you talk on the phone or have dinner with them. There is always something new going on, but it's still the same person.
Jim Carrey is Joel Barish. This character is a social idiot on the surface, but being extrovertly deaf and mute does not make a guy an idiot. He's just quiet on the outside and highly emotional inside. He feels like he is a bore, but what he has the potential to create with his art or his emotions are almost more intriguing than the mystery of quiet that surrounds him. When he meets Clementine, it's as if he's found the perfect compliment to what and who he is. They work not because they're soul mates or because they're destined to be together (as much as I love believing that and as much as I am a closet romantic), but they work because they are perfect for each other, like salt and pepper or chocolate and vanilla or love and hate - simply by meeting, they have reached the threshold of compatibility, so they end up together by primarily by choice and secondarily by default. So, they live their lives together and they make each other scream with excitement inside because the intrigue of one another is enough to destroy worlds. And Clementine did just that. She destroyed the world between Joel and Clem. At least, she tried to.
Clem is a wild girl that I love. I love her because she's eccentric and isn't afraid of getting into trouble. She is absolutely fucking nuts and you don't like her you're just jealous because she doesn't give a shit about you. She loves Joel because he is a staple of patience and composure in a life that seems jagged and intense. I love her because she makes potato people, not because she colors her hair every color of the rainbow. I love her because she is not afraid to share every little embarrassing thing with Joel, and she does it with humility but not shame. I love her because she's impulsive one minute and seriously enlightened the next. She knows she has the whole world pegged and doesn't have to prove it: she just lives it. I love her for the same reasons I love myself. And I love Charlie Kaufman for writing her.
Clem and Joel get in a fight. I heard a reviewer on IMDB call it a "silly argument". Well to that person, I say FUCK YOU. What Joel said was a deal-breaker. You don't tell your favorite girl that she fucks people to get them to like her. You just don't fucking say that, let alone think it. I would have gone to a clinic to have him erased, too. I certainly wouldn't have just let it slide or called it a "silly argument". When he said that, he entered a different arena of reality that she subsequently created for them to wade through. When he said that, he dared life to tear him down.
She goes to Lacuna and tells them he's boring and goes on and on about what she hates about him. She thinks those are good enough reasons to erase someone, to erase Joel. Joel finds out about what she did from friends that tell him about it after he approaches them about why she acted like she didn't know him when he visited her at work....not only did she not know him, but she was already kissing someone else. He is devastated by this and goes to Lacuna to have Clem erased in retaliation. It's not simple to cut strings that strong, however. The movie is the memory erasure. It is the way they do it, how they do it and most importantly - it is a depiction of the reasons why no one should ever erase anyone: because in the end, it hurts more to have them erased than to live with the memories. When Joel tries to erase Clem, his mind fragments into half himself and half Clem and as he lay helpless in his bed asleep as the memory erasure clinic does their job, Clem and Joel do everything they can to stop the process together, in his mind. They work hard on ideas on how to hide memories so the erasers cannot find them. The eraser guys are good, though. This Lacuna Inc knows what they're doing and how to do it well. In the end, Lacuna succeeds at erasing all the memories and Joel wakes up feeling empty and vaguely strange.
Joel, I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to make them alive, but I'm just a fucked up girl who is looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.
I remember that speech really well.
I had you pegged, didn't I?
You had the whole human race pegged.
Probably.
I still thought you were going to save me. Even after that.
For what it's worth, I think that Joel is the one who saves Clem in this movie. I think she is the one who needed to be saved from whatever it was that made her forget what it means to remember something. At the end of this movie, Joel is the hero. He's the one who made it to the train just in time.
Let's go back to the beginning of this movie. First of all, I love stories that are written backward. They're way more exciting. It's the perfect and fun way to grab people and throw them for a loop before they even know what's going on. In this case, Joel meets Clem on the train after they've both been erased from each other's minds. However, the audience does not know this. The audience thinks this is the very first time these two characters have met. But the beginning of the movie is actually the beginning of the end. It is the moral of the story: memory erasing can only work if inevitability is erased as well. You can't erase inevitability - and the incredible opening scene between Joel and Clem on the train makes that clear....really clear the second time around and even clearer the third, fourth and fifth time you watch the movie.
What do I love about this opening scene the most? When Clem punches Joel's arm and salutes him with a "take care now". I absolutely fucking love that. So real. It makes them both as real as any other friend I've ever had, before the meat of the movie even begins.
Jim Carrey is a better actor than a comic, in my opinion. This role could not have been taken by anyone else who would have done a "better job". No one else could have played Clem but Kate Winslet, either. For a Brit, she's 100% convincing as an all-american girl. All the other characters are interchangeable, but those two sealed the deal on making the story complete.
I don't see anything I don't like about you.
But you will! But you will, and I'll get bored with you and feel trapped, because that's what happens with me.
Okay
Okay.
As far as this being directed by Michel Gondry, I don't know what to say except that I feel like I know why he directed this. I feel like I know why him and Charlie have to work together. I can't explain it, but I know it inside. The only person that would agree with me and like my answer if I tried to explain it, is myself. And that's the way it is. It's also the reason why he directed the videos of my two favorite Björk pieces. Something about themes he uses, and the brazen imagery of colors, and how he barely uses special effects because he's so smart in how he films that he doens't have to. May Gondry live for a very long time and create many more lavishly organic, beautiful film works. He is a great, great artist and man. I don't know him, but I feel like it's okay to write that about him. That's all I'm going to say about the brilliant Michel Gondry.
And now is the time when I comment on the last part of the memory erasing sequence. This is the most beautiful and lasting impression from a movie I remember, ever, and it's probably something that is so lasting that it will probably pop into my head if it has the time to, right before I die.
This scene is the most touching scene I've ever experienced visually, audibly, and emotionally. It hit me somewhere that makes me cry, literally, every single time I see it or hear the piano piece associated with the scene (Peer Pressure by composer Jon Brion). The dialogue is the most real dialogue of any characters I've ever gotten to know. It is me and bw, but mostly me and myself. That scene is Joel and himself coming to terms with the reality of nothing means anything except for the fact that we are fragile and our memories are the most meaningful things we own - and they're also the only things that we have in life, even though we're so bombarded with "stuff" and "things" and stupid shit that does NOT matter. That scene is the heart of why we exist and the fun we try to have with each other while we're lucky enough to be on this earth. It means to me what waking up means to me every morning I hear bw breathing or wake up and feel no pain, lucky to be healthy and alive. It means to me what I feel when I think of what I know I know about the world and people and relationships and life and death and laughter and questions and joking and going with the flow and accepting that everything will eventually disappear and nothing will be left for me to cling to - zap, gone.
This is it Joel. It's going to be gone soon.
I know.
What do we do?
Enjoy it.
And that's what it boils down to. That's what took me so long to figure out. And that's the reason why I'm still around and why I love life no matter what the fuck is going on. What a trip.
That feeling of desperation, of hopelessness, feeling like I know that everything will eventually be gone, disappears when little things clue me in on the absurd possibility that there are backdoors of inevitability that will bring me right back to where I started. I can still laugh because I am comforted by that.
Meet me in Montauk.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just do yourself a favor and buy the movie.
ESOTM is an adventure in the world of organic complexity that is the human mind, as being verifiable only by memories. And how memories are here one minute, be them good or bad, and then gone the next. It is a beautiful way of telling each and every one of you the simple truth that what you think is a bad memory of a relationship might have nothing to do with the other person, but it might have everything to do with how you see yourself and how you reacted to it at the time. It also reminds us of the fragility of what we have, and how some people in our lives could be inescapable by the force of consciousness, once we come into contact with them. It's almost as if the only things in our lives that are unchangeable are the people that change our lives. Some people think that destiny is real and it runs the world. But I think that destiny only exists in relationships with other people.
This movie was written by Charlie Kaufman. He is graciously humble and as talented as a son of a bitch with an uncanny knack of bringing movies to a level of a never-ending philosophical conversation, yet displaying the most complete stories ever. His movies are conversations with audiences, flawlessly providing complete experiences. The satisfaction people get from his stories make their experiences worth returning to, over and over again. Kaufman films are probably watched multiple times more than any other flicks out there besides maybe cult classics. There is a reason for that. Every time you watch a Kaufman film, you get something new, something else out of it. His films are like friends, actually. Something different every time you talk on the phone or have dinner with them. There is always something new going on, but it's still the same person.
Jim Carrey is Joel Barish. This character is a social idiot on the surface, but being extrovertly deaf and mute does not make a guy an idiot. He's just quiet on the outside and highly emotional inside. He feels like he is a bore, but what he has the potential to create with his art or his emotions are almost more intriguing than the mystery of quiet that surrounds him. When he meets Clementine, it's as if he's found the perfect compliment to what and who he is. They work not because they're soul mates or because they're destined to be together (as much as I love believing that and as much as I am a closet romantic), but they work because they are perfect for each other, like salt and pepper or chocolate and vanilla or love and hate - simply by meeting, they have reached the threshold of compatibility, so they end up together by primarily by choice and secondarily by default. So, they live their lives together and they make each other scream with excitement inside because the intrigue of one another is enough to destroy worlds. And Clementine did just that. She destroyed the world between Joel and Clem. At least, she tried to.
Clem is a wild girl that I love. I love her because she's eccentric and isn't afraid of getting into trouble. She is absolutely fucking nuts and you don't like her you're just jealous because she doesn't give a shit about you. She loves Joel because he is a staple of patience and composure in a life that seems jagged and intense. I love her because she makes potato people, not because she colors her hair every color of the rainbow. I love her because she is not afraid to share every little embarrassing thing with Joel, and she does it with humility but not shame. I love her because she's impulsive one minute and seriously enlightened the next. She knows she has the whole world pegged and doesn't have to prove it: she just lives it. I love her for the same reasons I love myself. And I love Charlie Kaufman for writing her.
Clem and Joel get in a fight. I heard a reviewer on IMDB call it a "silly argument". Well to that person, I say FUCK YOU. What Joel said was a deal-breaker. You don't tell your favorite girl that she fucks people to get them to like her. You just don't fucking say that, let alone think it. I would have gone to a clinic to have him erased, too. I certainly wouldn't have just let it slide or called it a "silly argument". When he said that, he entered a different arena of reality that she subsequently created for them to wade through. When he said that, he dared life to tear him down.
She goes to Lacuna and tells them he's boring and goes on and on about what she hates about him. She thinks those are good enough reasons to erase someone, to erase Joel. Joel finds out about what she did from friends that tell him about it after he approaches them about why she acted like she didn't know him when he visited her at work....not only did she not know him, but she was already kissing someone else. He is devastated by this and goes to Lacuna to have Clem erased in retaliation. It's not simple to cut strings that strong, however. The movie is the memory erasure. It is the way they do it, how they do it and most importantly - it is a depiction of the reasons why no one should ever erase anyone: because in the end, it hurts more to have them erased than to live with the memories. When Joel tries to erase Clem, his mind fragments into half himself and half Clem and as he lay helpless in his bed asleep as the memory erasure clinic does their job, Clem and Joel do everything they can to stop the process together, in his mind. They work hard on ideas on how to hide memories so the erasers cannot find them. The eraser guys are good, though. This Lacuna Inc knows what they're doing and how to do it well. In the end, Lacuna succeeds at erasing all the memories and Joel wakes up feeling empty and vaguely strange.
Joel, I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to make them alive, but I'm just a fucked up girl who is looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.
I remember that speech really well.
I had you pegged, didn't I?
You had the whole human race pegged.
Probably.
I still thought you were going to save me. Even after that.
For what it's worth, I think that Joel is the one who saves Clem in this movie. I think she is the one who needed to be saved from whatever it was that made her forget what it means to remember something. At the end of this movie, Joel is the hero. He's the one who made it to the train just in time.
Let's go back to the beginning of this movie. First of all, I love stories that are written backward. They're way more exciting. It's the perfect and fun way to grab people and throw them for a loop before they even know what's going on. In this case, Joel meets Clem on the train after they've both been erased from each other's minds. However, the audience does not know this. The audience thinks this is the very first time these two characters have met. But the beginning of the movie is actually the beginning of the end. It is the moral of the story: memory erasing can only work if inevitability is erased as well. You can't erase inevitability - and the incredible opening scene between Joel and Clem on the train makes that clear....really clear the second time around and even clearer the third, fourth and fifth time you watch the movie.
What do I love about this opening scene the most? When Clem punches Joel's arm and salutes him with a "take care now". I absolutely fucking love that. So real. It makes them both as real as any other friend I've ever had, before the meat of the movie even begins.
Jim Carrey is a better actor than a comic, in my opinion. This role could not have been taken by anyone else who would have done a "better job". No one else could have played Clem but Kate Winslet, either. For a Brit, she's 100% convincing as an all-american girl. All the other characters are interchangeable, but those two sealed the deal on making the story complete.
I don't see anything I don't like about you.
But you will! But you will, and I'll get bored with you and feel trapped, because that's what happens with me.
Okay
Okay.
As far as this being directed by Michel Gondry, I don't know what to say except that I feel like I know why he directed this. I feel like I know why him and Charlie have to work together. I can't explain it, but I know it inside. The only person that would agree with me and like my answer if I tried to explain it, is myself. And that's the way it is. It's also the reason why he directed the videos of my two favorite Björk pieces. Something about themes he uses, and the brazen imagery of colors, and how he barely uses special effects because he's so smart in how he films that he doens't have to. May Gondry live for a very long time and create many more lavishly organic, beautiful film works. He is a great, great artist and man. I don't know him, but I feel like it's okay to write that about him. That's all I'm going to say about the brilliant Michel Gondry.
And now is the time when I comment on the last part of the memory erasing sequence. This is the most beautiful and lasting impression from a movie I remember, ever, and it's probably something that is so lasting that it will probably pop into my head if it has the time to, right before I die.
This scene is the most touching scene I've ever experienced visually, audibly, and emotionally. It hit me somewhere that makes me cry, literally, every single time I see it or hear the piano piece associated with the scene (Peer Pressure by composer Jon Brion). The dialogue is the most real dialogue of any characters I've ever gotten to know. It is me and bw, but mostly me and myself. That scene is Joel and himself coming to terms with the reality of nothing means anything except for the fact that we are fragile and our memories are the most meaningful things we own - and they're also the only things that we have in life, even though we're so bombarded with "stuff" and "things" and stupid shit that does NOT matter. That scene is the heart of why we exist and the fun we try to have with each other while we're lucky enough to be on this earth. It means to me what waking up means to me every morning I hear bw breathing or wake up and feel no pain, lucky to be healthy and alive. It means to me what I feel when I think of what I know I know about the world and people and relationships and life and death and laughter and questions and joking and going with the flow and accepting that everything will eventually disappear and nothing will be left for me to cling to - zap, gone.
This is it Joel. It's going to be gone soon.
I know.
What do we do?
Enjoy it.
And that's what it boils down to. That's what took me so long to figure out. And that's the reason why I'm still around and why I love life no matter what the fuck is going on. What a trip.
That feeling of desperation, of hopelessness, feeling like I know that everything will eventually be gone, disappears when little things clue me in on the absurd possibility that there are backdoors of inevitability that will bring me right back to where I started. I can still laugh because I am comforted by that.
Meet me in Montauk.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just do yourself a favor and buy the movie.