Thought-provoking, depressingly realistic, brillant movie

Rating: Null/10 (23 March 2004)

This is not a movie to see if you are either a. Currently in a dead-end relationship or b. Just recently ended a dead-end relationship. It is not a movie to give the viewer a "feel-good" experience. It is much more like real life, where people use each other, not out of malice, but out of loneliness, emptiness and frustration.
As the song goes "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone". Imagine if you could really TOTALLY get rid of someone? Would you? Or is there a sense of inevitability to our relationships, that we keep picking the same person (or same type of person) again and again, unable to really make a fresh start? This movie evokes another song's lyrics for me, "Swimming in a fish bowl, year after year, running over the same old ground, how we found, the same old fear." (Pink Floyd, not sure of the song's title).
These are, in my opinion, the questions that this movie explores. And answers beautifully.
But again, don't expect to feel wonderful at the end of this movie. You will see yourself in some or many of these characters, and the look in this cinematic mirror is not pretty.
A brilliant work of fantasy, exploration of the imagery and workings of the inner mind, and of the quiet inner struggles of the average person. Both Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are wonderful. Especially Winslet, who effortlessly dons a convincing American accent, and is a complicated and chameleon-like persona.
We never really find out why Carrey's or Winslet's characters are the way they are. They never really can reveal their true selves, either to each other or to us.