Struck deep

Rating: Null/10 (4 April 2004)

Eternal sunshine struck deep, and I enthusiastically recommend it as an post-modern treatment of an age-old subject, love, who we love and why we love. This film is starkly real, as is much of the film's imagery. The characters are totally human and totally honest. And even though the thing was literally loaded with more-or-less standard symbolism: ocean and sand for emotion and despair, dark, empty house for delving into intimacy, and so on, the camera and editing was so cleverly handled that for me, none of it ever became cliche. Besides, watching it all is just a lot of fun. Seeing Ruffalo and Dunst dancing in their underwear was worth the price of admission alone. I also appreciated that the plot, though not totally straight-forward, was illustrated sufficiently clearly so putting it in order was easy.
My favorite part was at the very end when Joel responded to Clementine's submission about her own character. Just the way he said, "Okay." With one word the depth of the need of the sensitive human spirit to "connect" with one special beloved person was summed up. Love triumphed when Joel was able to say, okay, and mean it. It was okay to be vulnerable and forgive, for the prospect of companionship.
Though Eternal sunshine is about forgetting, I doubt I will.