Pictures of You

Rating: 10/10 (15 April 2004)

"Eternal Sunshine" is a complicated story that demands your full attention; Mr. Gondry unfolds it at a mind-bending pace. This alone makes it a hugely refreshing respite from ordinary multiplex fare.
The perceived message in the movie was you can't run from your problems, failures, inadequacies. It was also exploration of memory and it's qualities to shape your personality and reactions to relationships. The movie's dialog keeps things real with sharp exchanges and interesting small details.
Contrary to what people say about it being hard to follow, I found the editing on a story that COULD have been truly mind bending, to be pleasantly cohesive. If you paid any amount of attention to the film, you would easily and completely understand it.
Similar to Vanilla Sky or Punch Drunk Love, it made me kind of hopefully sad. Also in similarity people left during the middle of the movie when they weren't laughing enough. Mass market movie? Not quite yet.
The knowledge that with relationships the very good comes with the very bad and vice versa. However, it was very subtle and deft in conveying the message subliminally. Personally, I can't stand when a movie beats you senseless with it's ill fitting one size fits all 'message'.
The movie to me was like a great photograph that let's you find the meaning in relation to your own life. A Rorschach test of sorts. If a person can find a way to identify with the situations and ignore the vast number of gaps in the 'science' of the premise they could find their own meaning in it.
Reading other user comments cements in my mind that 90% of reviewers don't have a clue about what they are writing here. Another 5% want to complain about a trivial portion of the movie be it style, a plot hole (in a sci-fi movie no less) or the simple fact that they don't particularly care for an actor. This makes surfing for 5% real fairminded reviews a challenge. A great story rips away any preconceived thoughts the actor outside of the films parameters. It's called suspension of disbelief and a few people should lighten up and learn about it or stop watching anything but documentary films. Regarding the use of style techniques in this film, I think that if you have such a major problem with motion sickness during a film, you should get to the film on time so you don't have to sit in the front row, bring motion sickness medicine or just stay at home and not see movies in a theater. I would prefer you do the later.