May 3rd 2004 12:58 pm You are my sunshine (part deux)
Collin came up to visit yesterday, and it was nice to see him as always, despite meaning to get here at 10:00am and not arriving until 3:00pm. It all worked out pleasantly, as I spent the morning (and early afternoon) “working,” recording a fairly splendid piano recital at the Conservatory. It began to rain shortly after Collin arrived, and the Museum of Fine Arts (our intended destination) closes early on Sundays, so we merely hung out around my apartment. Working mostly backwards, we decided on Indian food for a late dinner before he left, and a movie beforehand. Not entirely a day on the city, per se, but then we are not city folk. I left the choice of movie to Collin, who selected Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Having been afforded the opportunity to see it again, I feel qualified and obligated to expand on my previous “review,” which in its brevity scarcely merits the term.
There are many things I admire and wonder at in this film. For me, perhaps the best moment was the realization to the audience that Kaufman was playing at an extended life/death metaphor when Clementine expresses that “this will all be gone soon,” and, when asked what they should do, Joel replies simply: “Enjoy it.” Indeed, we should all live so. We cannot escape our fate, so it is useless - a waste of something precious - to spend such time as we may spend in the attempt. The historiographical implications of such a movie as this one are also exciting, and merit further thought in my geeky mind. If history is not what happened, but rather what we remember happening, what is history when it is erased? As Illyria relevantly points out on Angel (leave it to a fictional pre-historic demon from the WB to lend credence to your philosophizing), we “are but a summation of recollections.” And when those recollections fail, fade, or are altered? What are we then? Are we still ourselves? Do we need those recollections back to be truly ourselves? And what is history then? Does the deletion of memory simply add another layer?
I wonder, though, what Kaufman meant to say with his premise: two people are erased from each other’s minds, and yet end up together again a mere week later. It is the type of concept that will inspire a good variety of reactions. On the one hand, it seems to insinuate that if two people are “meant” for one another, nothing can keep them apart - not even something as extreme as erasing one another entirely. This idea is best supported by the inclusion of Howard’s relationship with Mary: we do not learn from the history we erase (see above, historiography), and the appearance of this second repeated relationship might suggest to some that we are destined to repeat it. But I do not believe that the movie was meant to communicate this, exactly. It is a rather extreme interpretation, and altogether too neat and pretty for the depth of this film. I think the message is more subtle and, as such, more obvious but less perceptible (leave it to a movie such as this one to tolerate oxymoron).
Rather than jumping to the conclusion that two instances results in a pattern (bad logic), I prefer the “simpler” interpretation that people impact people in a way that cannot be undone, erased. No matter how hard we pretend, how much we long to detach ourselves from a friendship gone wrong or a relationship badly-ended, we are changed for them and cannot escape that. Clementine expresses it herself on tape before undergoing the operation: she states that she feels that Joel has changed her (for the worse, in this instance). Reviewers have posited that this film lacks emotion - it is intellectual at its core, and people cannot relate. I believe that they are missing the point. How can we feel when all of our experiences that would provoke such feelings have been erased? How can we interact in a world when we are no longer whole? Emotion is not the point, but it is absent for a reason: it has no place, no context. It has been removed, replaced by nothing, a hollow that Kaufman’s characters cannot even perceive. People are the point. Relationships, experiences, come and go and change with time: they begin, they end, we move on. But people are indelible.