Out of Egypt:

Eternal Sunshine (as dictated to Bob)

Well, this is an interesting experience. I've been laid low by the stomach virus/food poisoning and so I'm basically an editorial demon on Bob's shoulder right now, as he midwifes my thoughts to birth. I'm listening to Johnny Cash, whom I must confess I hardly heard of until the day he died. So I guess that makes me a bandwagon... or something.

Speaking of being introduced to music through death, I learned to appreciate Elliot Smith a great deal more this past fall, when he commited suicide. My friend Matt Serfass heard about it before I did from Melinda Gilbert, who went to high school with us. She said to him, "Did you hear about Elliot Smith?" And he said, "What, is there going to be a concert in Philly soon?" And she said, "No. He's dead."

So anyway, on to the actual topic of this post: I saw Eternal Sunshine a few weeks back, as Bob already mentioned on his blog. I really wanted to see the movie, primarily because of the preview which reminded me of a surrealist painting and also, strangely enough, of oranges.

Actually, as it turned out, they were tangerines.

Oddly enough, doing this post dictation-style makes me suffer from an odd form of performance anziety, as if I'm worried that what I say will be inadequate to what I want to say. Suddenly that invisible audience is all too present.

Therefore, I will begin with the most frivolous of my reflections and maybe later progress to something more substantive. I was really impressed with Kirsten Dunst's performance, minor as it was. No longer will I think of her as that annoying girl from Spiderman. It turns out she can play drunken stoned people quite well. And any scene that includes the Clash is OK in my book. They practically telegraphed what was going on between her and her psychiatrist father figure employer, but that was cool. I always enjoy watching character-driven movies because it's almost like emotional voyeurism - you know something that the characters do not.

It was like that with Joel and Clementine, as well. Since you are quite literally inside Joel's head for a good portion of the movie, you feel by the end like you've grown to know him in a deeper way that Clementine ever did, even though you've only seen him for two hours and she's seen him for several months straight. As he said to her once, "There's a difference between talking and communicating." All the talking which went on in their relationship seemingly prevented the real communication from beginning.

I must confess, I was surprised to see Elijah Wood in this movie. That wasn't something I'd seen in the previews. It was amusing to see him take a minor role and one in which he is portrayed in a less-than-flattering light, to put it mildly. I'm glad Frodo has come back to the real world, or as much of the real world exists in a movie where time itself is out of joint.

The beginning of this movie, the part before the opening credits, was longer than in any movie I've seen in recent memory. What is more, the actual chronology of how that relates to Joel's love affair with Clementine is not clear until much later, if indeed it ever is.

Seeing Carrey weep with the credits below him, unobtrusive in their sans-serifness, is the perfect way to begin the film. That, coupled with the February bleakness of his New York milieu, throws the viewer off-balance from the start.

As someone who has experienced mental illness, both watching and being acted upon by it, I found the scenes immediately following Joel's breakup with Clementine were like a meditation on the effects of depression. The camera sees all, hollow as Carrey is himself. His lengthening stubble beard is a visible manifestation of his growing apathy.

Clementine, however, is mania, life lived upon an impulse. The scene in which she takes Joel out to the ice, urging him to disregard all fear and step out with her, is beautiful. It was at this point, more than any other in the movie, that I felt the vicarious experience of joy that makes us love the movies. Yet I knew that this was foolishness and that it couldn't last.

I would like to talk about all the beautiful cinematography in this movie, such as the scene in which Joel's childhood house dissolves into a clapboard ruin and the scene in which Joel and Clementine wake up together in bed on the beach at Montauk in the snow, which was one of the scenes from the preview that first drew me to the movie. I could also, time permitting, speak about all the Freudian imagery, such as Joel's memories of his mother's legs, of masturbation, and of being bathed in the sink. Faceless people and disappearances in the subway station would enter into this reminiscence, yet I will not pursue it. For all that surrealism has not left me with any deeper meaning, only aesthetic gratification.

The movie is based on a Charlie Kaufmann script. Before this, I had only seen Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. While this movie does not have the nihilism of that, it leaves you (or at least me) with a message no greater than this: take life as it comes, don't give up on the future because you've been scarred by the past. While that may be great advice for this world, I don't think it will help us in the next.

Flattered I get a mention in your blog, but I wish, however, that I seemed less gossipy / insensitive. Oh well. Anyhow, I just wanted to say hi and that I hope everything is going well (and for selfish reasons, distract myself from my endless studying of business statistics - sigh, wrong path, definitely the wrong path). Oh, and that I also enjoyed Eternal Sunshine, although I would have to see it again before I could analyze any part of it, I spent most of the last screening in complete awe of the aesthetics of the on-screen images and exchanging whispers with girlfriends about how this movie actually made Jim Carrey a very attractive person.

Posted by: Melinda at April 12, 2004 1:26 AM

I always thought Jim Carrey was an attractive person. (Not to me, but I could imagine women being attracted to him.)

Kate Winslet I actually found rather unattractive with the ever-changing selection of hair dyes. (Particularly the blue.)

Posted by: Evan Donovan at April 12, 2004 11:54 AM

wheres the hours of sunshine from sarah,lizzie and sam. ps you suck

Posted by: lizzie at February 3, 2006 7:03 AM

sowwy :) luv ya really (i dunno who you are ) xxxxx

Posted by: lizzie at February 3, 2006 7:06 AM