Thought-provoking take on human nature.

Rating: 8/10 (25 March 2017)

Looking back at the content of this movie, I think it may have worked better as a short. The scenes of Joel forgetting Clementine and realizing that he doesn't want to forget her were interesting and had some pretty cool special effects, but thematically, I would have preferred less of them. The ending with Joel and Clementine finding out that they (SPOILER) have already had a failed relationship would probably have been just as effective if all of the memory erasure scenes had been cut. The emotional and relationship tendencies that the story explores are, I feel, the best aspect of it, although the more sci-fi elements were pretty good as well. It presents so many deep and universal points about the nature of relationships that I think are really important to hear. I didn't think it was entirely plausible that both couples that had their relationships destroyed by the Lacuna operation ended up falling in love after it took place, but I was okay with it. And it helped to support the awesome ending when Joel and Clementine agree that "yes, we probably will find things we don't like about each other, but why not give it a shot?".
The movie was a little hard to watch because it was so disjointed. In the end it all pretty much made sense, but it just dragged a little. Still, the content was interesting enough and there were surprising enough complications to keep me interested. Plus, there were a bunch of interesting little lines interspersed. The characters were not the most intriguing of people even if they had some different life perspectives, but they had distinct personalities and were acted pretty well. It was nice to see a lot of big actors put into this smaller movie, which I guess speaks to how good of a story it is.
I didn't feel like the script was totally stellar, but it shows some really good qualities. For one thing, it created some pretty solid characters that had thought-provoking perspectives but still felt like real people. It made fabulous use of its identity as a sci-fi movie. Most of the time, science fiction movies get caught up in visual spectacle and put less effort into using the rules of their world to tell a compelling story, but we get the inverse here. The movie might be visually bleak, but it uses its cerebral nature to hit upon some very human themes about the mind and the heart. The thematic focus of the movie seems to be more on the relationships it presents than any Memento-style investigations of the phenomenon of memory. On the downside, the dialogue was not terribly engaging, despite the numerous excellent one-liners. The pacing was also a problem for me, but I don't think it will be a problem for everyone.
Just a couple of final notes. I recommend that you not judge this movie too quickly. It will probably impress you more as you sit on some of the ideas it presents in the following days. Also, for sci-fi fans, be aware that the focus of the movie is on people and human issues rather than more traditional sci-fi plots. The cerebral side of the story mostly serves the purpose of proving that what you don't know can hurt you. Overall Rating: 7.8/10.