Forget me not

Noel Vera

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," Michel Gondry's film of
Charlie Kaufman's script, is perhaps Kaufman's best effort to date.
It does, however, resemble one of the lesser ideas Philip K. Dick
worked into his short stories ("We Can Remember It For You
Wholesale," the basis for "Total Recall"), or as background gimmick
for one of his major novels ("Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
the basis for "Blade Runner"): what if memory was like a series of
files that can be deleted? Why would people want their memories
deleted, and what would it be like to be the person whose memories
are being erased?

Kaufman doesn't quite fully work out this society where memory can be
fully erased, or at least not to the extent Dick might have; he also
doesn't explore the possibility of false memories being implanted (in
which case, aside from therapeutic use, the technique could also make
for the ultimate escape/wish-fulfillment fantasy--what "Total Recall"
was all about). And where the chief emotional tone of Dick's works is
paranoia and fear, you might say the chief emotions in Kaufman's is
gentler melancholy and regret. Both, however, deal in deft
metaphysical jokes and sudden twists in reality, both are full of
thought-provoking fun.

Joel Barish is recognizably a Dickian protagonist: he's the kind of
loser Dick writes about who can barely get out of bed, and put
himself through a work day (is why the choice of Tom Cruise
in "Minority Report," or Ben Affleck in "Paycheck" seem so
laughable); in Kaufman's story he's played by Jim Carrey with less of
Carrey's trademark Plastic Man comedy, and more of Kaufman's
trademark angst (this is easily the finest, most low-key, most
Dickian performance Carrey has given in his career). The girl whose
presence Barish wants wiped from his brain is Clementine Kruczynski
(Kate Winslet--as gorgeous and emotionally translucent on the big
screen as always). Clementine and Joel once lived together, until
Joel learned that Clementine had visited a company called Lacuna,
Incorporated, and asked for all her memories of Joel erased; Joel,
feeling some tit for tat was in order, also goes to Lacuna Inc., and
so it goes.

Kaufman includes a subplot involving the Lacuna employees: Stan (Mark
Ruffalo) and Patrick (an un-hobbitish Elijah Wood), a pair of less-
than-professional technicians, come to Joel's house to do the
erasing; Mary the corporate secretary (Kirsten Dunst) drops by to
visit her boyfriend Stan; Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) is
called in to try make everything right--which only guarantees, of
course, that everything goes wrong. Aside from giving us a basis for
the film's conclusion, Kaufman's subplot also takes clever potshots
at scientists and the unintended consequences of their creations.

Unlike "Being John Malkovich" or "Adaptation" Kaufman simply doesn't
come up with a brilliant idea that he fizzles away in several
desperate attempts to develop the concept; he uses the device of an
unhappy love affair to sustain our interest, to give his story human
depth and feeling. After the initial oddness of their "first"
encounter, Joel and Clementine talk and act like a longtime couple;
their moments of tenderness and irritation, love and despair act like
familiar signposts along the way, to allow the viewer to regain or
maintain his emotional bearings. At one point Joel changes his mind
and fights to retain some memory of Clementine, and his struggle has
a poignant sting to it, in the way it resembles a mental condition
like Alzheimer's, or progressive amnesia (this is what Adam
Sandler's "50 First Dates" could have been if it wasn't an Adam
Sandler comedy). Most disturbing of all is how his increasing
forgetfulness gradually comes to resemble the general deterioration
of all memories from all minds, the result of nothing more than
simple entropy, or old age…

Lotus-eaters

Noel Vera

Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Dreamers" is a lovely reverie of a movie.
Matthew, an American (Michael Pitt, looking remarkably like Leonardo
DiCaprio) wanders outside the Cinematheque Francais (only in Paris,
Matthew observes, do they put a movie theater inside a palace) at the
historic time when Henri Langlois was fired by the government and
Parisian cinephiles rose in protest. We glimpse (in newsreel footage
inserted between shots) the faces of Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc
Godard, Jean Pierre Leaud; Matthew approaches a beautiful young girl
named Isabelle (Eva Green, daughter of actress Marlene Jobert--who
was in Godard's "Masculine-Feminine"), chained to a gate and smoking
a cigarette like a Godardian femme fatale; we later meet Isabelle's
brother, Theo (Louis Garrel, son of filmmaker Phillipe Garrel), and
the lovely melody of Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" tinkles in the
background. Bertolucci's latest may appeal to the ordinary viewer
(mainly thanks to the casually frank nudity), but it's really meant
to intoxicate and enchant a lover of film.

That could be the problem many film critics have over the picture--
when you read the pans and criticisms, you get a sense of "how silly
he is, trying to recapture a glorious moment in the past, in our
youth!" Bertolucci courts that silliness when his camera comes in
through the window and glides over a casually planted book by Susan
Sontag along the way, but I think if a viewer can just give in to the
silliness, accept even a little of Bertolucci's terms, it can be
quite an experience.

Matthew is invited by Isabelle and Theo to live in their vast
apartment. They play pop quizzes, daring each other to guess which
movie they're referencing; get into frenzied arguments over films,
music, politics; drink up old wine vintages; rummage the trash cans
outside for food. At one point Isabelle wins one of their pop quizzes
(the answer was Marlene Dietrich's gorilla dance in "Blonde Venus")
and demands that Theo kneel before his poster of Dietrich in "The
Blue Angel;" Theo obliges. Isabelle then demands that Theo masturbate
before Dietrich, as he always does; to Matthew's horror, Theo obeys.

Matthew finds himself drawn into a rather strange world where
cinephilia and other types of philia exist side-by-side, naked limbs
inextricably intertwined. Isabelle and Theo appear to have an
incestuous relationship (though the film's most startling moment (it
follows a pop quiz the answer to which is Howard Hawk's
magnificent "Scarface") puts that relationship in a different--and
stranger--light); Matthew is clearly attracted to Isabelle, and is a
trifle disturbed at the nonchalant way Theo seems to expose himself
to Matthew. Towards the film's end, Matthew uses what influence he
has over the siblings to try pry them apart. Call it what you may--
the prudish American trying to reform decadent Europeans, the
insidious outsider trying to corrupt Edenic innocents, the sensible
realist trying to wake deluded dreamers--Matthew's interference is
the catalyst that changes the siblings' lives forever.

What can I say about the film? The conclusion is possibly a touch too
sudden, the relationship between the twins probably too, uh, complex
(I suppose most people would say perverse). Personally speaking, I
thought Matthew hit the jackpot--to share a shadowed, labyrinthine
world with two beautiful cinephiles, recklessly drink expensive
French wine, share the occasional large roach (could be hand-rolled
tobacco, but I doubt it), have passionate discussions on the merits
of Chaplin and Keaton, Clapton and Hendrix, and make love so slowly
and sensually you don't know (or care) whether it's noon or night.
You don't really need an antagonist, you don't really need conflict;
the drama of such a situation is that you know it'll all end, in one
way or another; somehow, the world intrudes, and you're cast out from
Eden. The terror and despair is in waiting for the moment when.

(Originally printed in Menzone magazine, May 2004)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)