Eternal Sunshine
By The more I think about it, the more I think this is my movie of the year so far (although I still haven’t seen Vera Drake), and I’m not sure if I don’t agree with Rob that it may be the best movie I’ve seen about a relationship. Two good posts on the film:
Holbo’s Nietzschean interpretation
A report on a debate between the director and writer. I’ve got to say my initial interpretation was closer to Kaufman’s, but I’m intrigued to watch it again and try to see it as Gondry does. And I think we can accept Gondry’s ontology of the self without his seeming mysticism; by which I mean the self-in-relation is created through interaction and the mental processes through which that interaction is interpreted. The latter can not be severed from the former, but can take place without the actual spatiotemporal presence of the other–the self-in-relation can be alone in a physical sense, but never an epistemic sense. We are always, forever, stuck “with others” no matter how alone we might try to be. Hey, that was actually one of the points of a somewhat less brilliant but still very good Kaufman/Gondry movie, Human Nature.
If you missed it, see it. I’m ordering the DVD (ESofSM, not Human Nature).