board77

Well you didn't like Solaris, Griff, so why should I listen to what you say about movies?

I kid, I kid.

Too long?

I know I didn't feel that way when I watched it the first time. I guess I really enjoyed those memory erasure scenes --- they just worked for me on a poetic level, bringing me into the experience of their love together.

And I am going to buy it on DVD --- if I can find it for low enough. So there!

And just for the record, I don't see how I resemble Jim Carrey or Bruce Campbell, but hey, those two aren't the worst to be compared to.

I actually don't like Jim Carrey's looks

Since this thread is already derailed, I think Faramond looks more like Orson Welles circa 1950. Think of Harry Lime. Does he have the voice to go with the look?

YESSSSSSSSSS!!!!! The first thread I started at B77, and it successfully derailed! I feel so proud! :cheers

Oh Lordy-loo!

Now I look like Harry Lime?

That slime?

At least I get to have that really demented cool speech in the ferris wheel. Now that was a movie! Best ending ever. Seriously.

I don't think I sound like Orson Welles, though.


Griff, so you don't like Jim Carrey's looks? Well I don't look anything like him, thankfully.

Orson Welles? As Harry Lime? *has to Google it*

Hmmmmm ... maybe. A bit. More than like Jim Carrey, in any case

Let's see ... perhaps a bit like Colin Firth. Jawline and such.

Do we win anything other than a warm fuzzy feeling of having helped derail a thread for this?

In my defence, I was TIRED when I saw Eternal Sunshine in the movies. Maybe that's why it felt a little long to me in places!

There's someone Faramond reminds me of, but I need to find pictures, and they're not on this computer, so... later.

I loved the movie and I loved the ending. I usually like movies where Jim Carrey actually acts. I liked the open ending.

I think Faramond could be an older Karl Urban.. and he has the same intense glare

I really think people overlooked something special in this movie. Charlie Kauffman tends to have these great ideas that fall apart in the end, but this one used all his weirdness to go somewhere. It's not often you get a romance movie that says something that's simple and profound at the same time. IMHO.

Also it always makes me think of Elijah talking about it at the Trilogy screening and meaning to compliment Jim Carrey while sounding like he was insulting him. (He said, "Jim Carrey just gives the great performance you've ever seen..." then realized that was way to over the top so clarified, "For him." So it sounded like he was cutting him down: It's a great performance...for him.

-m

My best film of last year along with Sideways. It was romantic in the very best sense and very truthful about the bittersweet poison that memories can be of someone you loved, who was nevertheless bad for you. I've been there, as I'm sure almost all of us have.

Not only was it emotionally truthful but I also thought it was philosophically truthful in that memories, no matter how painful, are always worth holding onto so long as you can reach a point where they don't consume you. Erasing someone out of your life is an attractive idea on paper only, in reality it would be, in the deepest sense, a betrayal of yourself. I also liked the groundhog day element at the end which leaves it open as to whether they can reconnect a second time and succeed this time out... it depends on your view of human nature I guess as to whether you think it is possible.

Apart from the great script (most deserving Original Screenplay win at the oscars), I thought the acting was uniformly strong. I loved Winslet's portrayal of her character, you can see why Carrey fell in love with her but also why that self-destructive streak of hers stopped any chance of their happiness first time out (though Carrey's mopey angst doesn't help). The direction of Michel Gondry was wonderfully inventive, which you would expect from such an innovative music video director and was perfect for the material, especially the scenes of the self-destructing memories.

I have actually only seen it the once, but it is a testiment to it's effect on me that though nine or ten months have passed since I saw it, it stills plays clearly in my mind.

Great film.

Iavas_Saar - Good one!

The more I read about people rapsodizing about the film the more I think I should watch it again, when I'm more rested and such I did like most of it, after all!

The very same Karl Urban whose face I scribbled on and turned demonic?



And yes, you should watch it again, Griff.


edit: but why are you laughing, Griff? Is it so far-fetched that I might slightly resemble a good-looking movie star?

Hmm, don't answer that.

Faramond - the very same one. Around the eye area. Intense and all that.

*10 minutes passes*

Oh.

Erhm.

Whu ... where ... office ... oh!

Sorry

Got lost staring into that intense glare there, for a moment.

Oh what? 10 minutes you say? *blushes s'more*

*fans self, bit flustered*

Does that answer your question?

Yes! My question is answered.

Carrots!

Lots of Carrots for Griffy!





Oh, um, on topic, I loved the little side plot with Elijah Wood, and his futile attempt to program a love instead finding it and letting it grow naturally.

Okay, that should cover it.

True! That was a part of the movie that has sort of slipped my mind A very good little side plot. Overall the movie made some valid statements about love, IMHO.

The more I think about it, the more I think I should see it again! I'll poll my friends - some of them are bound to have it on DVD, and I'll let them know I'd like to borrow it in the none too distant future. And then I'll watch it with someone nice

I feel like some people here (such as democritus) got something a little different from the movie than I did. Was I the only one who felt that the "bad times" between Jim Carey and Kate Winslet were only recent, and that as the memories receded further back in time it became clear to Jim Carey that most of the time their relationship had been great? It's interesting that different people can see the same film, draw totally different things from it, and agree that its brilliant.

Wingy, I agree with your interpretation I think there were probably signs of problems early on, but they only got really bad near the end.

Wingy

It has to be remembered that it was Winslets character that started the ball rolling by erasing her memories of Carrey from her mind. He responded (in an understandable fit of pique) by asking for the same service to be done for him. However having started the procedure he remembers just why he fell in love with her in the first place, and from that point on it is a journey of travelling back through the memories of the relationship from the good to the bad and examining why it went bad, why she left him, and why she would take the extreme step of having him erased from her memories.

The sweet, sad and disarming aspect to the movie is how Carrey's mind invents a sympathetic version of Winslet in his minds eye which naturally, because it is a figment of his imagination, is prepared to assist him in trying to save the memories of their relationship in a way that the real Winslet, at that point, probably would not have done. The Winslet he creates in his minds eye allows him to have the kinds of conversations with 'her' as they examine the memories of their relationship that he probably wished he could have had the opportunity to have had with the real her in real life.

Again, I think most of us have been at that situation when, picking through the pieces of a failed relationship that we didn't want to end, wish we could go back through time to a particular point in the relationship where we could have had the opportunity to choose a different path or even have the opportunity to say the sorts of things about what we were thinking and feeling at the time, but for some reason didn't say, to our eventual cost.

In the movie, Carrey gets the opportunity to have those sorts of conversations with the 'fictional' Winslet as they wade through the debris of his memories, which provide him with a sense of closure and relief from his personal demons that he would have got had he had been able to have those sorts of conversations with the real Winslet at the end of their relationship. It is of course another layer that adds to the psychology of the movie, that these 'conversations' are in effect a monologue between himself and his vision of Winslet as he would have liked her to have been. A vision of Winslet, which over time, when reviewing the memories of why they split, becomes increasingly distant from the behaviour and motivations of the 'real' Winslet of his memories.

Having gone through this process of reliving and dealing with even the most painful of memories it allows him to, in effect, start over with the real Winslet at the end of the movie with a relatively clean slate, perhaps wiser and more able to make a better go of it the second time around. However human nature is a powerful and deterministic thing and I like how the movie leaves it moot as to whether the two of them have a real chance to make it the second time around. I think there are grounds for both optimism and pessimism in this particular case.

Democritus: That's a very interesting interpretation of the film. Certainly more "beneath the surface" than mine. I'll keep some of those ideas in mind next time I watch the film.