Before I watched this I had heard many a good word about this film. I don’t actually know why I hadn’t seen it before. The film is about a couple whose relationship has gone wrong and the woman goes to see a doctor about getting all her memories removed from the relationship. The next day her boyfriend realizes that she doesn’t know who she is and decided to get his memories wiped.
The film is then shot from 2 perspectives; one is the real world outside his mind. The other is the memories from inside the man’s mind. He is in a dream state induced by drugs, from here his memories which have been mapped the day before are cleared.
From the other films I have seen which look at memory I found to be the most visually exploration. The style and camera work were amazing, just the thing I like. There is one scene where the main character is in a street chasing after his girlfriend after an argument. He parks his car at one side of the street and walks chasing her. This was perceived as the memory, he then steps out of the memory and walks to the other side of the street where his car is then in front of him. Walking back on himself he walks to where he previously was and his car is where he left it. He then runs to catch up with his memory and the car seems to be at the end of the road. After arguing which was the memory, he walks back on himself again to find the car where he left it in the original place. The whole thing is shot with amazing fluidity and there aren’t any points where you feel that time was stop, the whole shoot was well thought out and the end result was amazing and confusing.
Other visuals from this film were the forgetting of faces which blurred. I have already myself used the same idea so I wouldn’t think the idea was very original but the way in which it was shot was. It was actually quite scary when the doctor’s face was missing because the memories have been previously wiped. When memories were being wiped the scene transformed into a spotlight area and you could only see from within the spotlight. When everything was dark and you just saw a blurred face it was quite disturbing. I think this portrayed the emotions on the man very well.
Other visuals were any data not remembered or needed was not shown in the dream state. There is another scene in the library and all the books spines and bookcase sections have been masked out. The whole thing isn’t just stationary; it has a fluid feel to it. Some spines are shown and then suddenly flash with a white blocked area of the spine. I think this was to show the memory being wiped but in my eyes a memory would not have remembered little if any of the books when his concentration was directed towards his girlfriend.
image taken from http://www.chucksconnection.com/eternalsunshine/eternal01.jpg
The ending of the removal of his memories is quite surreal. He is saying goodbye to his girlfriend as the memory of the relationship is starting. To say goodbye at the start of something is quite strange. As he is doing this the house is falling apart around him. This memory was strongest in his mind and the falling down of the house was slow. I think the director wanted to show that the strongest memories are the hardest to forget. The gradual destruction of the house showed this and it was different from the other style used to show the removal of memories.
I thought this was a very interesting and well shot movie. Some of the casting let the film down but Jimm Carry’s performance was amazing. Some of the film was cluttered with humour which I thought never really worked too well. The scene where they were getting drunk and stoned while his memories were being wiped was a bit over the top, although I did see the reason for using something which distracted the observer from the waking of the dream state.
I found a relationship to another film called ’50 First Dates’ where there is a dream state from which memories are created, although the science behind them are a little different. In my research I found out that dreaming helps with the organizing of the long term memory. In Eternal Sunshine the removal of memories was seen in a dream state where as in 50 First Dates she was unable to store her day’s information while sleeping. They both showed this removal of memories while in sleep states.
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