sunshine, eternal and spotless

our Tuesday Night Movie Club met this past Wednesday, and it seems my abiding desire to have a recurring cinema discussion group is becoming a reality. it's an exciting prospect, and we're at the stage when people take those first steps beyond friendly acquaintance into friendship and intimacy. there is a tingle to the experience, an air of anticipation as we share memories under the cloak of mythologies yet to be exposed. it was in this atmosphere that we we watched
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:


i saw the film for the first time not long after it came out, during a hazy section of my life when i was deluded enough to believe i had married my own Clementine. i remember us talking about how much i was like Joel, and when she admonishes him in the bookstore:

"Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them,
or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl
who's lookin' for my own peace of mind; don't assign me yours."

i had a flashback to February 2000, when my future Ex told me much the same in a bank parking lot on a Sunday morning. i had driven all night from Manhattan to Gainesville, crazed and frantic to see her, after turning down my dream job in a courtyard apartment in the West Village. at the time i thought it romantic, but as the years wore on, i came to know that i had ignored the warnings of Circe.

this is the point.

when i first saw Eternal Sunshine, i was too consumed by my own mythology and illusion to really pay attention. this week, however, i saw for the first time the tension between the film's existential content (memory, identity, the problem of choice) and its absurd romanticism. the narrative's meant-to-be-ness obscures the fact that Joel and Clementine's insecurities and resentments are destined to recur and sabotage their love. these foibles are inside of them
- inside of us - and we cannot help but project them outward until they are fully embraced.

the truth is obscured, not obliterated.

i focused on the existential.

without memory we live in stasis, growthless and confined. this goes beyond the transitory nature of relationships; it goes further than the cursory glances thrown at mirror and reflection. knowledge of self is sustainable only if it is etched into our consciousness, and the mind must record the experience of transcendence no matter how poor the fidelity. these flashes of insight, of wisdom, of beauty, art and love - these are the things that give us a reference point, the ability to know there is (at worst) the possibility of something more than the tiny boxes into which we circumscribe our being.