Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!/ The world forgetting, by the world forgot/ Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! –Alexander Pope in Eloisa to Abelard(1717)

Why would a person want to erase an entire episode of their life from memory? Maybe a serious, traumatic experience could prompt this action? Or perhaps one could want their memory erased to forget another person entirely, for eternity. Joel Barish, played by Jim Carrey takes on this endeavor through a fictional procedure to eradicate the girl he once loved, Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) in director Michel Gondry’s romantic comedy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

The movie starts with Joel randomly skipping work, taking a different train to Montauk and walking aimlessly on an unusual beach, all of these actions seem impulsive and unwarranted. He meets a woman seemingly doing the same exact thing- walking aimlessly during the middle of a perfect workday on the beach. The two get curious with one another’s actions and start to hit it off. After some filler romantic scenes, they break it off over an unknown reason and thus resulting in trying to rid each other of their memories. Clementine does it first; she goes to Lacuna Inc., a company that has the technology to erase another’s specific memories, and completes the process. Joel, not one to be outdone, decides to follow in suit. The bulk of the movie is in Joel’s memories, trying to hold on and piece together the history of their relationship all the while a team of professionals from ensue to zap away Clementine in each particular event. In the end, the memories become completely erased and swept away forever. However, Joel and Clementine somehow meet again, through impulse and fall in love all over again, in a replication of the last relationship.

The procedure the people from Lacuna Inc. do, although entirely unreal, focuses on erasing precise memories by using retrieval cues, symbols and things that reminds the customer of the other person they are trying to get erased. After analyzing what parts of the brain react to the triggers, the team of professionals can zero into the exact brain coordinates which hold these memories and take them away. They drug the customer the ensuing night, which makes the customer fall into a deep sleep where he or she encounters each and every memory in reverse chronological order and the team uses technology to use the pinpoints they gathered earlier and erase them. However plausible this procedure may seem, it’s completely made up. There is no way of pinpointing where certain memories take place. Researchers have only determined that memories are located through a loose webbing of experiences and an event stored throughout the brain, again, there is no way of finding these and erasing them.

Overall, I think the movie brings up more of societal and emotional questions more than others. Would this procedure be deemed lawful in society? Would you want to erase someone from your own memory? If a person were to replace themselves with Joel or Clementine, I believe a large majority of the populations would not choose to erase an entire person/place or thing from their entire recollection.

Unforgiven

The movie Unforgiven directed by Clint Eastwood, is a revistionist film to point out the flaws of the Western Genre for its usual excessive and unneccessary violence. However, the flaw of the western violence is, to me, not that big of a deal. Eastwood tried to show how thoughtless and uncivilized the genre dipicted the west through its use of woman abuse, gunslinging mentality, multiple killings, and the end-movie slaughtering. Sure, all of these things are bad, but hey, in the end the bad guys were all gone, and the good guys were still around to make things back to normal. Examples: English Bob- gone by getting the crap kicked out of him, Guy who cut whore- killed, guy who "owned" whores- killed, and corrupt sheriff-killed. All of these members of society represented the unjust, ruthless, stuid, and self promoting aspects of the town. All of the good guys, lived and went on, Munny-moved to San Fran, townfolk- not killed, whores- staying alive. The only good guy who wasnt eliminated was Munny's partner, Ned. Overall, I feel like the movie played a role in that it said yeah violence is bad but the people who use it for the wrong reason get whats coming to them.

This concept of the good guys winning relates in an almost inverse way today. Today, a lot of the times, the bad guys win. All of the "red tape" in the judicial system, all of the bureaurocratic inefficiency and most all of the liberals help the bad guys win and the good guys lose nowadays. The judicial system is corrupt in it takes years for trials and a good lawyer will get anyone out of anything, even if they are 100% guilty of a crime. Exibit A: OJ Simpson, Exhibit B: the GHB drug being used for raping women yet the accused not guilty because the woman was unconscious and couldnt say "no". Liberals help the issue with their "it isnt my fault" whining. Most liberals take a "victimized" stance on touchy issues to slither a way out. "Its not my fault I drank too much alcohol and hit a person with my car, its the bartender who sold me the drinks" but, "its not the bartenders fault, its the manufacturer who sold the alcoholic beverages to the car" and, "it cant be the manufacturers fault, becuase it was the government who gave them the permit to brew alcohol" and so on, and so on. If only we adopted a wild west gunslinging law to rid the world of the drug dealers, rapists, liberals, bureaucrats, and whiners, this country would be a much better place.

The Great Escape

The Great Escape (1963), directed by John Sturges, is a World War II based movie about the largest mass escape by allies from a POW camp during WWII. Some notable actors who played key roles in the movie were Steve McQueen (Captain Hilts), James Garner (Lt. Hendley), and Charles Bronson (Lt. Danny Velinski).

The greatest part about The Great Escape, is not only the comedic ways of the concentration camp, or even the adventurous ways the guys previously try to escape. No, the greatest part of the whole movie is the dynamite script. The person who was most responsible for the script was James Clavell, who also wrote notable scripts for the household named movies, To Sir, With Love (1967), and The Fly (1958). A little known fact about Clavell: he actually recieved the Writers Guild Best Screenplay Award in 1963 for The Great Escape. That just goes to show how awesome the script was indeed. The main idea for the movie originated from the story of how about 70 POW's in WWII managed to escape Hitler's grasp in newly built captive camps. Paul Brinkhill wrote the novel The Great Escape, of which the movie is based on. The genious these guys displayed were really quite remarkable. They created picks by taking pipes off a car, they made a small hand shovel with the muffler of the car, they disguised thier pounding by singing and they built infrastructure from various pieces of wood taken from behing cabinets and other appliances. Clavell does these geniouses justice by eloquently creating narrative for the guys to mimic what was most likely normal conversation and jargon in the camp during the time.

The suspense of whether or not the germans will find out what they are doing also adds to the film. The secret conversations and meetings held are under supervision from a chain of people sitting outside to make sure the germans dont see them doing anything.

Overall, the movie was good but the script writing was great. In most war movies, the dialogue doesnt matter, just as long as the audience sees a ton of fighting and action. With The Great Escape, the writing is what keeps the audience and attentive and entertained throughout.

ALL WORKS