To forgive or forget; that is the question...

I recently saw "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", a movie which disturbed me more than I had expected it to. Though I'm not sure if it was the thought of someone erasing me from their memory or me erasing someone else.

This movie is a revelation in so many ways. Jim Carrey makes you forget about Ace Ventura and the fact that he ever talked out of his butt. His Joel Barrish is at once an Everyman, slumped and drab and at once someone utterly unique, with a vibrant imagination and intense dreams and wishes. Kate Winslet's Clementine (I can't remember how to spell her last name) is so much more than the poster child for both ADD and Manic Panic hairdye. She imbues Clementine with enough depth to understand why Joel fell for her so hard. So many people like to palm off their relationship on Joel needing someone impulsive in his dreary life. I think that might have been the original attraction, but over the course of their relationship as seen during Joel's memory flashbacks, it would seem that it became about those two real people, not just their stereotypes.

Charlie Kaufman, who did "Being John Malkovich", "Human Nature", and "Adaptation" also penned this movie. I have not yet seen "Human Nature" but from what I've seen, Kaufman is not only becoming a bit more quirky, but he's delving more into the emotions behind the quirks. You care for Joel and Clementine more than you cared for anyone in "Being John Malkovich" and while "Adaptation" did have heart, it seems that "ESoTSM" has a soul as well. When Joel realizes that Clementine has enlisted Lacuna to erase all her memories of Joel after their bitter breakup, you honestly feel his pain(Pardon the BC reference). His spur of the moment decision to have her erased from his mind is understandable and deeply sad. As Clementine is adjusting to life without her memories of Joel, her confusion and realization that something is somehow wrong is devastating. These are two souls unknowingly searching for something and someone they've already found.

Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, and Tom Wilkinson are all very fine as the employees and owner of Lacuna. Kirsten Dunst, for once, doesn't make me want to smack her by the end of the movie, and Tom Wilkinson is both repellent and pitiable in his human faults. Elijah Wood is incredibly creepy as a Lacuna worker who fell in love with Clementine during her erasure process and has decided to use her deleted memories of Joel to win her affections. He may look like Frodo, but he sure don't act like him.

Of course so much of the moral of the story is that you can't really escape your past. As some people have told me, your mind may not remember something but your body and your entire being will. This is only partially reassuring.

I had to ask myself if I would ever consider doing something like that. Enough horrible stuff has happened in my life and I've often wondered what I'd be like if it had never happened. However, there is a difference between erasing something from your memory and it never occurring, as "ESoTSM" proves.

Though it may not sound like it, the movie is actually a comedy with some wickedly funny scenes, many taking place in Joel's memories. But overall "ESoTSM" is a melancholy meditation about the triumph and the destruction of love. You root for Joel and Clem to work it out and even though you know what will happen and they know what will happen, hope does seem to spring eternal for everyone.