Eternal Sunshine On A Spotless Mind (2004)

[Scott]

ETERNAL SUNSHINE ON A SPOTLESS MIND (2004) - This film starring Jim Carey started out very  "nice" then it kinda lost my interest with the memory erasing thing.

[nobody]

I loved this movie. I bought it the very day it came out on DVD. The memory wipe is the best part of the film! You must be insane. :)

...I also liked the "moral" of the story, too.

[peter johnson]

Nah, Scott's not "insane", though the fact he posts here may contradict that --
"I'm Mad, you're Mad, we're all Mad here!!" --
I loved this picture too -- found its use of Time and Space to be very cool &, well, "timely", in an artsy-fartsy sense . . .
Seriously, one of the great things about modern movie technology is that it can realise and make whole the visions of the Dada-Surrealists of the 1920's.  
I loved loved loved this film, and I am certain as a fish on a bicycle that Tirstan Tsara, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp would have loved it as well.
peter johnson/denny fish
Incidentally . . . it's "Of", not "On" a spotless mind . . .

[dean]

Great film.  No real need to elaborate further since I think I've sung praises for it before.  Of course, I respectfully disagree with Scott's opinion, though I would like to know exactly what was the problem with it. [I find that I need people to really justify why they didn't like a movie/song I love just because I'm so damn protective of it!]

[saintmort]

I think it's a matter of do you like Charlie Kaufman's movies or not. Personally I think he's the Salvador Dahl of the film industry. This, Being John Malkovich and Adapation took the audience in these whole new surreal worlds but did it in a way that we knew that it was fantasy but could still believe it in a weird way. He's one of my favorites (if not my favorite) screenplay writers.

[blkrider]

I liked it....I was very surprised because I thought it was going to be more of a romantic comedy, but it wound up having a lot more surrealist/fantastic elements.

Didn't know about the connections with Being John Malkovich.  No wonder.

[Scott]

I actually liked the romantic beginning and normally I'm into these type films, but I just couldn't get into them running from some guy with a memory eraser in his bed room. It became cluttered for me. The film had an interesting message, but the whole idea they would go to a memory eraser company to forget each other didn't work for me and then the company keeps pursuing they even after a rather obvious effort on both parties to stop the process he keeps trying to erase the memories.

Just a side note: For you fans of the paranormal and such the most interesting part of the film was the story takes place around the Matauk, Long Island area where those time travel experiments continued to take place after those at the Philadelphia Naval Yard years before. (so the legend goes).  Anyone make this connection ?

[peter johnson]

No, I didn't make the connection!!  Good catch, Scotto --
crane peter/denny johnson fish

[Yaddo 42]

Another one who respectfully disagrees with Scott. I loved the film as well. I thought one of the points of the film was that both characters made a bad choice by going to the memory eraser, and Carrey's character hiding in his memories was the only way he could fight against it. All the characters were more believeable to me because they made bad choices, mistakes, screwed around on the job (even when rooting around in people's brains), etc. However powerful and special the technology was, it was still a product of humans and capable of being misused, either by the slacker assistants or the doctor trying to "fix" his own indiscretions. I thought it was a clever take on the old "Tampering in God's Domain" theme.

The chase through his head was a cool use of effects and old style camera tricks to augment the story rather than overpower it. It was "science fiction" as opposed to "sci-fi", and reminded me of good science fiction literature. While I love sci-fi action films, I wish more films like this one could get made.