Monday 8 August 2011

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2004 by Michel Gondry

I went to watch a new Malayalam movie, Veettilekkulla Vazhy, and found that in just two days after its release, the movie is not playing anymore. What a pity. I will have to wait till the dvd release now for this movie. I couldnt believe that within 2 days, they had removed a new movie, supposed to be good, which won many awards et all... So just came back to my apartment. Nothing to do, I knew there was no football match on TV, couple more weeks for La liga to commence, but still looked and there wasn't any. And then saw this cd, lying behind the pile with the stupid hollywood movies, which I had bought long back but never watched. Its perplexing, how I didnt watch this movie for so long.

A guy and lady, both quite different that they have problems with relationships and breaking into new ones, enters into a relation and soon takes scientific help in erasing each other from their memory. But then they slowly come back to the reality that they indeed like each other so well. 

To be very frank, this movie is very original and genuine. It is of course a mix of romance and science fiction and neo-realism and all. But still there is something very attractive about this movie. I normally don't like science fiction movies. Here, there seems to be a clinic where lots of people take help to erase somebody from their memories. Except for this factor, this movie is all about two very interesting characters. The girl can never carry long in any relationship and the man loses his partner even without knowing the reasons and then finds it impossible to even make eye contact with any female. But the beginning and ending of their relationship here, is portrayed really nicely.

In fact, the movie is best in its beginning and ending. In between there were moments, when the past and present is mixed too swiftly and sometimes even strangely, for me, when I didnt like the movie. But it regains its nicety towards the end. I just want to forget about the science fiction part, even if its possible or not possible, and admire the romantic aspect of the movie. In fact the science fiction side of the movie just reinstated the fact that it is when we are about to completely lose somebody or some thing that we really recognise the value of that person or thing in our lives.  The guy reaches, almost, the stage when he is about to completely forget the girl but then he realises the sweetness of those good moments with her. That was really genuinely shot.

Normally Jim Carry movies are a kind of strange ones in which he is over expressive, for me at least. I still enjoyed some of them as good entertainers. But in this movie, as Joel, he gives a wonderful performance. And Kate Winslet as Clementine is brilliant. Their performance should be one of the highlight of this movie. And the next favourite would be definitely, the script. A brilliant piece of work, I must say.

But I really wood like to see this movie once again. It is quite a different movie from Hollywood and feel a second watch would make this one a more nicer movie to me.