Who needs personality typing...
May. 13th, 2004 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cybermule...when you have surprising accurate quizzes. A spirograph, huh? Couldn't have put myself better myself :P
Anyway, talking of all things tripped out, on to the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind...
Putting aside the effect of absorbing company, this was a brilliant film. Right from the very first minute I became completely immersed in it. If you're thinking of seeing it, you've probably already sussed out the trippy precept, but if you've been living on a different planet, a quiet and introverted guy, played surprisingly well by Jim Carrey, undergoes special treatment to blot out the memory of his tempestuous relationship with the eccentric Kate Winslet.
I'd have to confess to not keeping entirely up with the choppy timeline at times - this reminded me of memento and particularly vanilla sky at times, and like both of those, I think I'd get even more out of a second watch. The comparison with Vanilla Sky seems particularly pertinent because of the trippy style of photography. Not trippy in the same way in both films - Vanilla Sky is a lot more polished, although I suspect that ESOTSM probably had nearly as much work put into it to achieve that slightly intimate home-movie look.
And the thing I most loved was the shockingly realistic disintegration of what seems at the beginning to be a perfect relationship. The way you slowly descend into the bitching and the complaining and the not talking to each other when you eat out. And the way that when it's gone, you suddenly forget all that, you gain selective memory and focus on the good bits, the brilliance that you brought to each other's lives. So in some ways I actually found it quite poignant and sad, and the ending, in my opinion, reflected that in it's ambiguity.
I think it also gave me a lot to think about in the nature of memories. I read somewhere recently that memories are just you remembering the last time you remembered the thing.
*pauses to briefly boggle*
And I think that the film highlighted how incredibly your sense of self is wrapped up in your memories (*), yet how impermanent and elusive they can be. You could lose them in a single night of heavy drinking :) And how much of yourself is really left when they're all gone? And how much have you twisted them round and round to suit what you *want* to remember happened?
So, in short, a beautiful and engrossing film that I want to watch again right now!
(*) = as a random thought, every person with whom you spend part of your life, to some extent, make a part of you. You are, after, the sum of your thoughts and experiences. It's both an exhortation to spend your life wisely and beautifully, and a a small compensation for those people who are gone.
*pauses again to reflect that in an odd way, this is one of the best weeks ever*
Anyway, talking of all things tripped out, on to the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind...
Putting aside the effect of absorbing company, this was a brilliant film. Right from the very first minute I became completely immersed in it. If you're thinking of seeing it, you've probably already sussed out the trippy precept, but if you've been living on a different planet, a quiet and introverted guy, played surprisingly well by Jim Carrey, undergoes special treatment to blot out the memory of his tempestuous relationship with the eccentric Kate Winslet.
I'd have to confess to not keeping entirely up with the choppy timeline at times - this reminded me of memento and particularly vanilla sky at times, and like both of those, I think I'd get even more out of a second watch. The comparison with Vanilla Sky seems particularly pertinent because of the trippy style of photography. Not trippy in the same way in both films - Vanilla Sky is a lot more polished, although I suspect that ESOTSM probably had nearly as much work put into it to achieve that slightly intimate home-movie look.
And the thing I most loved was the shockingly realistic disintegration of what seems at the beginning to be a perfect relationship. The way you slowly descend into the bitching and the complaining and the not talking to each other when you eat out. And the way that when it's gone, you suddenly forget all that, you gain selective memory and focus on the good bits, the brilliance that you brought to each other's lives. So in some ways I actually found it quite poignant and sad, and the ending, in my opinion, reflected that in it's ambiguity.
I think it also gave me a lot to think about in the nature of memories. I read somewhere recently that memories are just you remembering the last time you remembered the thing.
*pauses to briefly boggle*
And I think that the film highlighted how incredibly your sense of self is wrapped up in your memories (*), yet how impermanent and elusive they can be. You could lose them in a single night of heavy drinking :) And how much of yourself is really left when they're all gone? And how much have you twisted them round and round to suit what you *want* to remember happened?
So, in short, a beautiful and engrossing film that I want to watch again right now!
(*) = as a random thought, every person with whom you spend part of your life, to some extent, make a part of you. You are, after, the sum of your thoughts and experiences. It's both an exhortation to spend your life wisely and beautifully, and a a small compensation for those people who are gone.
*pauses again to reflect that in an odd way, this is one of the best weeks ever*
