| The Movie Mystic | by Stephen
Simon Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, 108 minutes, rated R for some drug and sexual content "Change your heart, and look around you.. Change your heart, it will astound you ...everybody's gotta learn sometime..." Your heart has been broken in a love relationship that ends. Someone offers you the chance to literally erase that relationship -- that person -- and everything about it and them--from your memory forever. Would you do it? Should you do it? COULD you do it? Such is the provocative premise of Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. To delve into the story too much would be to usurp from you the discovery of and fascination in its intricacy...so I would only say that the heart of the film takes place in the mind of its main character Joel, played with nuance, sensitivity and endearing vulnerability by Jim Carrey, in the first role in which he literally disappears into his character. As Carrey remembers Clementine, the great love of his life (played with heartbreaking, poignant, eclectic and luminescent beauty by the inestimable Kate Winslett), each memory is, at his request, systematically erased...or...is it? Can it ever be? The extraordinary Japanese film After Life posed the intriguing challenge of having to choose one memory in which to spend eternity. In Eternal Sunshine, the haunting question relates to our memories of those we have loved and who have loved us. What happens to our experience of those memories if the love transforms, ends, transmutes into pain, heartbreak, sadness? Do we live in the sunshine of the love as it was when it shone most brightly or do we suffer in the darkness of the pain of the aftermath of heartbreak and disillusionment? Would we erase those memories if we could? Or, perhaps, can we choose to experience both the light and the darkness, simultaneously and forever? The choice is always ours. If we could literally erase those conscious, and even subconscious memories, wouldn't something still remain in the depth of our unconscious, waiting to be triggered anew at a particular moment? Most importantly, what indeed ARE those memories? When we know that time is an illusion, and that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, what do we make real and what do we render to our dream and other than conscious states? Our memories in our waking, breathing existence are one representation of our "reality" and yet there are other states of that "beingness" that do not relate to our waking life, but rather belong in that infinite world of the perpetual life of our souls. Our soul groups. Our journey from lifetime to lifetime with those with whom we have made an eternal commitment to pursue growth and evolution. When we meet someone in one lifetime, we may not "remember" them in our conscious sense, but there is a stored genetic memory of the essence of our spirits that is as palpable and real, if not more so, as our senses of touch, taste and feel. So we resonate in their presence as though we do "know" them as, in fact, we do. The inexorable attraction that we feel seems to have no precedent in our conscious lives but we nevertheless instinctively know each other. Even if that experience eventually becomes one of pain and sadness, we internally know that the pact of mutual growth has been honored. With this vision of consciousness, there are no victims or blame; instead, there are only commitments kept and promises fulfilled. In Eternal Sunshine, Clementine and Joel find a blissful love that is reflected in their differences (his shyness and her extroverted charm) and their similarities (Chinese food, adventures at night in the dark)...and yet they repeat patterns from previous relationships that ultimately lead to separation; however, here they receive a gift of such extravagant promise that perhaps, once and for all, those patterns can be shattered forever. The experiences of Joel and Clementine seem then to me to be a metaphor for that inexorable and evolutionary quest of our souls from lifetime to lifetime...and then...beyond. Isn't this all a metaphor for our journey through our lifetimes, when we make decisions in the world between death and life and then play out those commitments in the moments between life and death? When, no matter what, we recognize each other without the assistance of conscious memory? When we make these eternal commitments, we have intentions that may not ever consciously occur to our human selves but, somehow, we find each other and play out the scenarios. On our way home...to oneness. Perhaps, then, at the depth and breadth of its vision, this amazing movie even presents us with the hope that our running can finally come to an end in the Eternal Sunshine of (OUR) Spotless Mind. As such, the film is nothing less than a filmic representation of those extraordinary promises that we make to each other, the "knowing" that no disappointment or heartbreak can erase from the blueprint of our soul. When entertainment can do this, it transcends the experience of movies and touches the face of eternity. And offers tantalizing glimpses to us of who we really may be. As the haunting theme of the film reminds us: "Change your heart, and look around you.. Change your heart, it will astound you ...everybody's gotta learn sometime..." Movie Mystic Chakra Rating for Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (For an explanation of THE CHAKRA RATING SYSTEM, please visit www.Movingmessagesmedia.com. Chakra: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Rating: 5 5 5 5 4 5 5 Stephen Simon produced such films as Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come and also produced and directed INDIGO. Stephen has just co-founded www. Spiritualcinemacircle.com and leads seminars, telecourses, and inspirational Mystical Movie events around the world. For more information, please visit www.Movingmessagesmedia.com. Stephen welcomes your comments by e-mail Stephen@Movingmessagesmedia.com Copyright © 2004 Stephen Simon |
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