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Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
The movie presents a world where one can erase memories. In fact the title comes from an Alexander Pope poem about two characters who are exploring how to handle their relationship. I like the scene where Clementine and Joel skates over a frozen lake. It comes as a good metaphor for any relationship. Clementine slips and bruises her butt. Her impulsiveness leaves Joel fearful to venture out. So they lied down and stared at the stars, hopeful.
Of course like all relationships, they both find faults and annoyances about each other. These imperfections finally drove Clementine to seek professional help. She decided to forget Joel. She wanted to erase her memory of him. Later it would happen also to Joel.
Eternal Sunshine is not chronological. It coils up into itself. It reconstructs reality. It shows the gradual blotting out of Joel's memory. It shows his struggle to hold on to a piece of Clementine because he still loves her. A struggle that is futile. In the end they listened to each other's declaration of hate against each other and could not believe their own words. Their taped confessions before their memories were erased seem to them unreal yet stark.
Jim Carrey plays Joel and Kate Winslet plays Clementine. With the way the story is presented, as a series of memories, it could have been messy but thanks to brilliant acting I symphatize with and feel the difficult situations the characters are in. Jim Carrey's performance in The Truman Show is just a teaser when comparing it to his performance in Eternal Sunshine.
You should watch this movie. You should watch it a couple of time more afterwards. I have a feeling that it gets better everytime you watch it.
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