by GeniustoBurn

Created on: April 01, 2010

I am a terrible moviegoer; I rarely make it to the cinema and promise myself I will catch the DVD. Or the TV premiere. Or you know, I’ll just watch a few movies next time I’m in an aeroplane. Thus I have missed many modern classics – possibly because of my natural dislike of anything that everyone else raves about. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are not two of my favourite actors, (in fact, they both make my top ten list of dislikeable actors) so perhaps it’s not surprising I had managed to avoid watching this movie for so long. I couldn’t stomach the thought of Kate Winslet being all blue haired and self consciously kooky.  But the more it was cited as a ground breaking piece of art, etc etc, I decided that I must see it.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much heart this film had. For the uninitiated (though there must be relatively few of you out there) this film is about Clementine, said blue haired girl, who has broken up with Joel (Jim Carrey) and decided, impulsively, to have all her memories of him erased from her brain. It beats the usual method of spending your evenings gorging on chocolate, watching Bruce Willis films and crying for a few months, doesn’t it? Luckily there is a company which performs such a service, although I’m a little hazy on the details. If you were trying to erase a marriage of twenty years, for instance, you probably wouldn’t  have a whole lot left by the time the memories connected with THAT person were gone, would you? Yet the clients awake feeling fine, with perhaps a few gaps in the memory, but with no more harm done than a few blackouts from heavy drinking.

The only problem is, the next time Joel sees her, he is nonplussed by her failure to recognise him. Long story short, he finds out about the procedure she has had done and decided if she can do it, so will he. But does he really want her out of his life, memories and all?

The following film is unexpectedly touching, and put together in a much more interesting way than I had hoped for. There are times when I just have to accept that there are people around who are about a million times smarter than me, and Charlie Kaufman (writer / producer extraordinaire) is one of them. He seems to specialise in mind bending, philosophical stories and is one of the leading lights in the “Let’s make films smarter” project running counter to the “lets’ dumb everything down” school of thought.

This film has something to say about love, and how it can permeate every part of us. If you have no memory of someone, can you still be “in love” with them? It’s a question asked by sufferers of amnesia and Alzheimer’s. Maybe there really is a secret place inside of us where love can still live even when all else is stripped away.

The quality of a film can sometimes be judged by the quality of actors in supporting roles, and this one boasts Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Kirsten Dunst and Tom Wilkinson. Quality all the way.

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