Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Over time, I've developed a guideline: don't go to movies in theaters. unless it's a big F/X blockbuster. (Or, optionally, if I feel I'd really miss out on it while it's a hot topic of public conversation.) You can't pause, the food is overpriced, the seats aren't as comfortable as the ones at home, it's more expensive and less than social than renting a video. (This is one of the reasons Love Blender reviews tend to me a bit out of date.) But this is one film I'm extremely glad I ignored that guideline: "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". This is a wonderful film, I'd say literally the best I've seen in a number of years: thought-provoking and melancholy-stirring, an incredible (mildly-scifi) "what if"....a "Vanilla Sky" minus the beautiful people factor (but better than that film), some of the timeshifting elements of Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five", a musing on the nature of memory, and living in it; "Memento" without the formal artifice structure. a bit sexy in parts but never exploitive (not that I mind a bit of gratuity now and then...), some thoughts on the natures of dreams and consciousness, finally asking the question if you thought you could mend a heartbreak by selectively erasing it from your mind, would you? It's a good question. I never would, being a nostalgic kind of guy, but it's a good question. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet develop a frantic kind of romantic chemistry as the main couple of the film. Carrey's character Joel Barish is a kind of thoughtful, nebbishy city dweller, while Winset's "Clementine" is a classic "dangergirl" type. Chaos results after she decides to have him erased from her memory and he follows suit when Joel realizes he's made a mistake...what follows is an amazing trip through his consciousness and memory as he fights to preserve her place in it. Friends of mine argue that the movie drags in places, and if you insist on a straight-forward narrative you might have trouble with it, but overall this is a fantastic movie that deserves to make better box office than it is getting. Go see it now. Bonus Link: Lacuna Inc. is the website of the fictional company that performs the memory erasure procedure.