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Rating: Null/10 (7 May 2006)

Every time I watch this movie I find something new. It feels almost like déjà vu . I already know how the story unfolds, yet I am still eager to watch it develop in front of me all over again. Watching through 'clear eyes' I discover fresh concepts, film techniques, and story connections to my own reality.
It flows through my eyes, to my body, to my heart, and until it finally reaches my soul. I fell in love once. A love just like Clementine and Joel. Complicated. Painful. A mixture of love and hate. Every time I watch the movie, I think of him. I often wonder how would I feel if I had erased him, erase everything, just like Joel and Clementime. We found a house on the beach, just like Joel and Clementine, and I remember thinking back to it. Our house as broken down, either because the building of it had never been completed or it broke down through the years. It was surrounded by pieces of broken shells and glass, containing only walls and stairs that led to the heavens. It stands alone, illuminated only by the fading light of the sunset. I think of that every time I watch this movie, often identifying with Clementing and seeing my former lover as Joel. As Clementine, I understand her intricacy, impulsiveness, and frustrations. For Joel, I see in him the reservation, hesitancy, and fears I saw in that person I once saw as the anchor that steadied my shaky ship.
The method with which the film is presented complex and dream-like, yet it is also the most accurate depiction of the human experience. We often live in the in-between moments of the past and present, filled with regrets, hopes, fears, and a simple desire to experience the beauty and pain of love. Everyone has had moments wherein the pain has felt so tremendous that all you wanted was for those memories to disappear and begin again with a 'spotless mind.' Oftentimes, the loss of someone significant in our lives propels our minds to automatically create a slide-show of memories and images of both the good times and the bad. Simultaneously wanting to forget, yet never wanting to let go. This is the beauty and brilliance of this film, it has found a way into our collective memories and translated the images of our mind unto the screen.