Sunshine

I've been thinking for a while now about writing some reviews of my favorite movies. Not your run-of-the-mill Ebert & Roeper reviews, mind you, but reviews with a little more meat to them. At least, meat that's significant to me and quite possibly to you. I'm not real sure how I'm going to format these as of yet, so bear with me for this first one and I'll improve as I go.

One of my favorite love stories is "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". It's not your typical love story, which is why I like it so much. I rented it within the last year and I finally purchased it recently and added it to my DVD collection. And since it reminded me of my desire to start the movie review series, it gets the honor of being the first film reviewed.

So, as I said before, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is not your typical love story. In fact, it's quite odd. The basic premise is that Joel (played by Jim Carrey) meets and falls in love with Clementine (played by Kate Winslett of "Titanic" fame). As their relationship progresses, they become tired of and irritated with each other. Clementine decides to go to a company that provides a service wherein they can erase any and all memories of a specific person from your life.

Joel finds out that Clementine has had the procedure and, in a final act of frustration, decides to have Clementine erased from his memory as well. But, while he's in the middle of his brain alteration, he realizes that their relationship wasn't all that bad and wants to stop the procedure. Unfortunately for him, he is in a sort of coma-like state and is unable to "wake up" and tell anyone to stop the mindwashing.

Instead, he follows the advice of the Clementine that still resides in his head:

"What if you take me somewhere else, somewhere where I don't belong and we can hide there until morning?"

Thus, the pair travels through the unmapped areas of Joel's brain in an attempt to escape from the forces that are trying to wipe her completely free from his skull.

Again, strange and atypical.

At the same time, though, it is sweet and redeeming.

To see why, let's look a little deeper into who Joel and Clementine are. Joel is a quiet and introspective guy who prefers to live within his own world and finds it difficult to deal with those around him. He's not totally antisocial, but he seems to fear the process in which people open themselves up to one another, particularly when it comes to a relationship with a woman. His hair is unkempt and his clothing is colorless and drab.

Clementine, on the other hand, is colorful in nearly every way. When we first meet her, her hair is dyed bright blue and she's wearing an orange sweatshirt. She's outgoing and willing to share just about anything about herself with just about anyone. She's almost intimate to a fault.

When they first meet, their personalities shine through. Clementine is somewhat pushy and overbearing while Joel is doing his best to just survive this encounter with this stranger. But things change. Joel goes out on a limb and offers Clementine a ride home, an act he would never normally do. Then, when they arrive at her place, he accepts her invitation to come up for a drink. Again, totally against the grain. She makes him promise to call when he gets home. He does and they end up going out again. They end up walking out on a frozen pond with Joel once again warily waving off his insecurities, his journey out onto the ice an obvious metaphor for the mini risks he's been taking in the early stages of his relationship with Clementine.

That's one of the first things that I really appreciated about Joel's character: His ability to finally put his fear aside and act on his feelings. That's definitely something that I've struggled with and continue to try to improve in my life, so I find it reassuring in this instance that he finds that the risk is worth taking.

There are a couple of other lessons that are somewhat interrelated:

-- People are unusual and cause each other pain.
-- People make mistakes, but love overcomes them.
-- It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
-- Things are usually more complicated than they seem.

The first one is a message you don't often get in your run-of-the-mill Hollywood movie. It seems that you'll usually find some gorgeous person who falls for another gorgeous person and ends up going through some minor conflict or miscommunication but they end up with each other in the end. That's really not how life works. People are weird. Everyone has some idiosyncrasies. Often times, those idiosyncrasies cause other people to hurt.

But true love finds a way to overcome and accept those oddities, which is the second lesson. People screw up. All the time. And people get hurt by those screw-ups. But true love deals with those mistakes and moves on. True love is the effort that people put out to get past those unintentional (or sometimes even intentional) wrongs.

The third point is a ridiculous cliche. But one that has weight. As the characters in this film demonstrate, they would rather have both good and bad memories of a relationship than no memories at all. And, honestly, you learn more about yourself and others from the lousy memories than the blissful ones.

The last message is a truth that goes largely unrecognized. There are many circumstances that play into how people interact with each other. Some are direct and some are VERY indirect. But it's unfair to judge a person or circumstance just by its outward appearance. There is usually a great deal going on behind the scenes that lends credence to what is actually happening. Just think about any regular situation in your own life. Then think about all the factors that have gone into why it has happened the way it has. Rarely do things occur in an isolated fashion.

So, there are my observations about "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. If you have seen it, I recommend seeing it again through the goggles of this review.

And now for a couple of random observations from the movie that I enjoyed, but didn't really fit into the theme of this essay:

Clementine had a collection of potatoes that she dressed in miniature human clothing. One was a nurse smoking a cigarette.

Random quote: "I'm making a birdhouse!"

Fantastic song that totally relates to the sweetness of this movie: "Somewhere Only We Know," by Keane.

Look for more reviews to come in the future. Until then, have fun!