Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind...

I was working again, yesterday, but that's another story...

I recently saw a good movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I highly recommend it to those who haven't seen till now. The story is quite known, so no point in telling it again. But what interested me was the whole idea behind the film, namely, you can choose to forget someone, but can you choose to fall in or out of love with him/her??
The movie begins with Jim Carey going to office on a Valentine's day in the morning, and discovering that his car is damaged. He is forced to take the subway, where he meets Kate Winslet. They are pole apart from each other, him being the cautious type, and her being the impulsive one. But they click. The story then shifts to Jim Carey crying in is car 'cos Kate has left him, and chosen to forget him and erase his memories from her brain through a medical procedure. In retaliation, he too chooses to erase her memories from his brain. What follows is the major part of the story, which takes place during one night. As Jim Carey is sleeping, two technicians come over to his apartment and systematically erase all the memories from his brain. We get a glimpse of all the memories that he Jim Carey had with Kate. About their trip to the beach, about how they fought at the flea market, their trip to the drive-in...
And we also learn how one of the technicians, played by Mr. Frodo himself, has fallen for Kate, and has in fact stolen Jim Carey's identity, and is using his memories with Kate to woo her. Kate, on her part, is quite impressed by the fact that he seems to like a lot of things that she does, but then is also perturbed at how he always seems to hit the bullseye with her, saying the right thing, doing the right thing. In short, there seems to be no passion in what he does, just clockwork precision. To whatever she says, he seems to have the right answer. We also learn how the office intern, played by Kirsten Dunst, had fallen for the head doctor and then chosen to have her memory removed when this didn't turn out well.
During the night, Jim Carey decided the the doesn't want to have Kate's memory erased, as he has realised how much he loves her. But its too late, and he tries in vain to save at least one of her memory by saving it with some other memory.
As the day breaks, the memory erasing is successful, and Jim Carey is not left with any memory of Kate at all. Here the movie proceeds as it had in the begining, and then the penny drops - the story telling was not a linear one, but rather, very non-linear. When Jim actually met Kate at the begining of the movie, it was after he had erased her memory. But still, when they met again, they hit it off, and were a couple again, which again brings us to the premise of the entire movie, namely, you can choose to erase a person's memory from your mind, but can you erase that person from your heart? Both Jim and Kate chose to forget each other, but when they met again, they were attracted to each otehr. Same way, Kirsten too got all the memories of the head doctor erased from her memory, but that didn't stop her from being attracted to him even later.
Many-a-times, we say that we want to forget someone whom we love, or wish we had never met that person at all, but is it really that easy? Will forgetting someone completely really help? What about heart matters? In the end, the movie really lays down rather conventional ideas, the type that we usually see in teh Meg Ryam rom-coms, but under the penmanship of Charlie Kaufman, the story gets a very good treatment.
I also like the other Kaufman-scripted movie, Adaptation. But while that movie was pretty out-there in it's narration, this one is more easier on the brain. Hmm...maybe love is easier to understand than identity (adaptation was about one's identity).
All in all, I highly recommend this movie.