Memories are not to be erased

Rating: 9/10 (19 September 2007)

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind - directed by Michel Gondry with Kate Winslet (as Clementine Kruczynski) and Jim Carrey (as Joel Barish) is a kind of food for thought.
Joel and Clementine met each other at a beach. They got together but then found so many conflictions that they broke up. Clementine decided to hire a doctor to erase Joel from her memory with modern technology. Finding out the truth, Joel decided to do the same thing. This, although "technically is brain damage", the effect is no more than a night of heavy drinking. During the process, Joel changed his mind and tried to keep the memories of Clem but he did not succeed. Soon later, Joel and Clem met each other again without remembering any thing about the past. However, the truth was revealed The movie is kind of boring for those who love action or thriller. There is almost no sexually hot scene or violence. Actually, it should not be too quick so that viewers can understand the plot. It has its own way to tense our nerves. The movie has a little bit of science-fiction with brain-erasing technology and a little bit of fantasy where memories and thoughts are mixed up, where one can go into his own mind and try to control it. It is full of surprises and keeps the viewers on wondering. The characters' feelings are very real.
The director is really good in his "reverse-chronologic" time sequence. Memories come back piece by piece, with the last  the most terrible one  comes first and those more beautiful come later and so Joel realises how great they were, and he finally wants to keep them.
The main actor and actress are completely a new version of themselves. Jim Carrey really did a "serious movie" and Kate Winslet was so great as an "impulsive" woman with changing hair colour time after time.
There was a line in "Before sunset" that "Memories are good if we don't have to deal with the past". Sometimes, memories are not so good and we want to erase them. We want to forget things that used to make us happy but are causing us troubles. Yet, memories are a part of life. You may try to erase it, even though by means of machines and technologies, they will eventually come back and the result is painful.
People want to erase the bad memories but keep the good ones. The film has its answers: both need to exist as they always have been.
Memories stay (but are not cleared away). Life goes on.
I like this movie so much that I write this comment for it, the first "review" I've written in my life =)