There aren't many screenwriters that gain any notoriety of their own that don't also direct. Off the top of my head, I can think of three, one great, one better off forgotten, and one last one.
The great one is Paddy Chayefsky.
The one best forgotten, and largely has been near as I can make out, is Joe Eszterhas.
And the last wrote today's movie entry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That would be Charlie Kaufman. The man seems to be branching out into directing, but really, he's good at what he does, and his films are enjoyably quirky.
This is not to take anything away from director Michel Gondry, either. Between the two of them, they have put together a movie that probably perfectly captures what it means to remember a loved one, and the paradox that losing that person, even temporarily, can give.
The movie opens with a usually-manic-but-not-this-time Jim Carrey as a humdrum guy named Joel who, on the spur of the moment, cuts work on Valentine's Day to go to the beach. Along the way he meets Clementine, played by Kate Winslet, with blue hair and what looks like the inability to sit still. The two hit it off, have a pleasant day together, and love seems to be in the air. But there are some odd things going on, such as Elijah Wood tentatively asking Carrey if he's supposed to be waiting outside Clem's house for her, or the weird dent in Carrey's car, or the simple fact he doesn't seem to know who Huckleberry Hound is.
It turns out there are reasons for all this.
We then go to a few days earlier where Carrey is driving home crying his eyes out. It seems that Clem has no idea who he is and was chatting away with a new guy Carrey only saw from the rear (turns out later it was Wood). He finds out from friends that, after a fight, Clem went to see about a new medical procedure that makes a person completely forget some aspect or person (or in the case of one woman in the waiting room a pet) that is making them miserable. Clem did this to herself and in short order, Joel decides to do the same.
After getting some kind of MRI to find where his memories of Clem are stored, Joel goes to bed and Wood (who works for the clinic and stole Joel's mementos in order to romance Clem himself) and Mark Ruffalo show up to hook his sedated head up to a gadget and erase his memories of Clementine. This leads to the film's most innovative work, with Joel inside his own head watching his memories disappear. At first, it looks like a smart choice as the memories disappear: he and Clem fight a lot, mostly because she grew bored with his repressed nature and he got annoyed at her irresponsibility. Then as the memories continue to disappear, we get back to the early ones and see the two were happy.
And therein lies the metaphorical rub! Why does the memory of Clem cause so much pain for Joel (and presumably vice versa as we never see inside Clem's head but see her confusion out of it)? Because as with all people, the good times are soured by the memory of bad times to come, and the bad times are so bad because there used to be really good times with the same person. Such is love. Not surprisingly, Joel changes his mind and does his best to hold onto something. He "hides" Clem in other memories, hence why he has no recollection of his favorite childhood cartoon, Huckleberry Hound.
But it seems lack of memory doesn't mean people won't make the same mistakes again. It's hardly surprising that Kirsten Dunst's Bartlett-citing receptionist has a thing for her boss given all the praise she lavishes on him in front of Ruffalo. When we find out she was an early patient and had an affair erased already and she is falling back towards that...
The movie ends on an ambiguous note. Joel and Clem learn they were treated, that she'll get bored with him and he'll get annoyed with her, and the two deciding to give it a try anyway. Maybe they get it right this time, maybe they don't, but maybe the movie is saying that ultimately, we're more than just what we remember and things beyond memories shape who we are and what choices we make.
No comments:
Post a Comment