Stunning, superb, must-see - an American classic.

Rating: Null/10 (16 May 2004)

Probably the best American film since "Fight Club". Kaufman is a genius, and along with David Fincher he has to be one of the most original and creative people working in mainstream American cinema today. This has to be his masterpiece.
Contrary to what some other reviewers feel, I believe that this is a VERY deep movie, and very disturbing in many ways. By the time the credits were rolling I found myself saying out loud "This is probably the most intelligent American movie I've ever seen." and that's not something I usually think after seeing a mainstream Hollywood feature.
I'm not at all scared by horror or thriller movies, but I literally had nightmares after watching this. Maybe I was more open to its message, having just lost a parent, but I found the way it approached its major themes -- love, memory, identity and loss, the power of science -- incredibly moving and deeply affecting, and yet it was so brilliantly handled, structurally dazzling, full of mordant humour, and moved along at such a cracking pace that the whole film felt about 1/2-hour long to me.
It's also -- despite what others have said -- a tour-de-force example of how CGI can be used well -- to create some profoundly unsettling visual imagery, very Freudian in parts -- a veritable blitzkrieg of surreal images, yet I never felt that (a la Star Wars) it was just technophilia.

Some of the scenes had truly chilling overtones -- the "winking out" of the people in the scene in the concourse at Grand Central Station; the fading covers of the books, Lacuna's systematic removal of all physical traces of the people being erased; the sinister banality of the staff, "just doing their job" -- and not very well at that -- as they go about the task of erasing people's memories. If Lacuna doesn't remind you of all those poor Russians who were rendered "non persons" by the KGB's patient, mundane, bureaucracy I think you're missing something.
I cannot recommend this film too highly and I firmly believe it will come to be regarded as one of the best American films ever made.