Film review: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Continuing the run of Charlie Kaufman screenplays, we have this one, which is not a laugh-out-louder, and is significantly less cynical than Malkovich.  In fact, it’s rather sweet and almost hopeful (with some gut punches along the way).  The film begins with Joel, played by Jim Carrey (who is in his subdued, Truman Show period, and already looks much older than the Mask-era antic mugger) waking up in a bad mood on Valentine ’s Day 2004.  He finds his car has a huge dent in the side, which he attributes to the car parked next to him, on whose windscreen he leaves a sarcastic “Thanks!” note.  (We later discover the real cause of that dent.)  He drives to the train station and is about to take his usual train to work when, on a sudden (and, he admits, uncharacteristic) impulse, he switches tracks at a run and jumps on the train to Montauk, and walks the freezing, February beach.  Another person is also on the beach, a woman, but as he says in the voice over, he can’t even meet the eyes of a woman he doesn’t know.  (This might be a clue, because after she introduces herself to him later, he seems to be able to look at her.)  She is Clementine, a wild free spirit who currently has hair colored “Blue Ruin” (as she informs a painfully tongue-tied Joel on the train) but who will have several different colors throughout the film.  She’s played by Kate Winslet, who is one of two Brits attempting American accents in this film.  There follows a whirlwind romance, aided by a midnight picnic out on the ice, and things seem to be going well when, after Joel offers to drop Clementine off at her home, she asks if she can come and sleep at his house.  As she goes inside to get a toothbrush, Joel has a strange encounter with Frodo (oh, okay, Elijah Wood, but let’s face it, he’ll be Frodo the rest of his career.  And actually, that’s one of the problems I have with this film: everybody is a familiar face.  I think the screenplay would have been better served by a cast of unknowns, as then we wouldn’t be saying “oh, hey, David Cross is in this too!” when we should be focusing on the plot) who taps on the window of Joel’s car and asks him if he can help him.  And then, all of a sudden, Joel is in his (undented) car, bawling his eyes out, and the credits are rolling (about 20 minutes in).  We will return to that first segment in the third act of the movie, and learn that that wasn’t the first time Joel and Clementine (and Elijah Wood) have met.  Because the main concept of the film is that there is a service, called Lacuna Inc., which will delete all the memories of your ex to enable you to get over a painful relationship.  And Joel (a few days younger Joel) soon discovers that Clementine has had him wiped from her mind, so he decides to do the same for her.  The director of this film (the French director Michel Gondry), like Spike Jonze in Malkovich, had previously only done videos (actually I checked this, and he had done another film, in fact another Charlie Kaufman penned film, but it was the not-very-good Human Nature) and commercials, and the film has a remarkably similar aesthetic (although, where the lighting in Malkovich seemed warm and yellow, this seems colder).  Lacuna Inc., far from being an ultra-modern, gleaming white affair, instead looks like a scruffy office from the 70s, with lots of old-fashioned files and things recorded on tapes rather than straight to a computer file.  (Gondry has displayed a similar affection for lo-tech, analogue equipment in his subsequent films, most notably Be Kind Rewind.)  The procedure requires you to have your brain scanned while they (Tom Wilkinson and Mark Ruffalo) show you items that you’ve collected that remind you of the offending person in your past so that they can get a map of where all the memories are.  Then you go home, take a knockout pill and they come over and set up their equipment and go about the process of deleting the memories.  (At first we wondered about this, but it makes sense, because then you can wake up in your own bed and go on about your life without being confused about why you’re in a strange doctor’s office – because, of course, they also delete your memory of having your memories deleted, otherwise you’d instantly investigate who you had deleted from your memory.  And, of course, we discover that our first sight of Joel waking up at the opening of the film was him waking up from the procedure.)  The bulk of the film actually happens as Joel is lying in his own bed having his memories deleted.  We get to know the employees of Lacuna, including the secretary (Kirsten Dunst) who has a crush on Dr. Mierswiak (Wilkinson) who invented the procedure.  Meanwhile, we also see Joel running around his subconscious trying to escape the procedure as Clementine disappears from memory after memory.  They try to hid somewhere off the map that Lacuna has made, such as in his childhood memories (so Jim Carrey becomes tiny and Kate Winslet becomes one of his mother’s friends, in a period outfit that Clementine covets) or in his humiliations.  None of this works, however, but Clementine whispers “meet me in Montauk” before her last iteration gets deleted.  Thus we return to the beginning of the movie, knowing why Joel was motivated to jump train platforms.  However, it is also revealed that Kirsten Dunst’s character has had a previous relationship with Dr. Mierswiak and he persuaded her to undergo the procedure (because his wife was not happy at the affair).  She is devastated, and decides that Lacuna is actually immoral, and removes crates of the files of every Lacuna customer and personally delivers each one to their address.  So when Clementine comes in to get her toothbrush, she discovers her file and a tape which she plays in Joel’s car, only to hear her own voice listing how awful he is.  Joel is freaked out and thinks she’s mocking him, and they fight and separate.  Meanwhile he returns to find his own tape.  Will their relationship survive?  Should it?

This film is often cited as a useful illustration of memory theories of personal identity, which is why I selected it, but I think that’s actually a side issue.  It made me think of couples who have each previously divorced and enter their relationship more ready to make compromises and cut the other slack.  Only in this case Joel and Clementine’s previous partner was the other.  But their relationship begins with listening to each person recount the worst features of the other, so it is a relationship built on acceptance and realism, and likely to be stronger.  In their instance, Lacuna has enabled them, in effect, to time-travel and re-do their relationship, better this time.  Is it wishful thinking?  Sort of, but it’s actually less so than most romances, and we feel more hopeful for Joel and Clementine than for couples who don’t know what they’re in for.  It’s the opposite of the ending of The Graduate.  An uncharacteristically hopeful script from Charlie Kaufman?  Well, judging by his subsequent films, it didn’t take.
(Oh: and the title is from Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope - a nice link with Craig’s puppet show in Malkovich.)

Film review: Being John Malkovich (1999)

Another one from the turn of the millennium, which you really notice when you see the large cellphones and (jarringly) a shot of the World Trade Center at one point.  I think this is the first screenplay that Charlie Kaufman got filmed, and just about all of them are philosophically interesting, so we might be watching another one very soon.  This is another one, like Memento, that everyone has to watch.  If you haven’t, why haven’t you?  Here’s one selling point: it’s laugh out loud funny, and nowadays, for me, just about nothing, is literally lol funny.  I had forgotten that, and actually a lot of details, as maybe you have if you saw it back then.  So here are the basics.  John Cusack (what happened to him?  Seriously?) is Craig Schwartz, a depressed, pathetic (the marker of which is his pony tail) puppeteer (okay, that’s a pretty big marker too) who longs to make money from his incredibly pretentious puppeteering.  This is not such a pipedream either, because he sees his rival Derek Mantini on TV doing a show involving a GIANT puppet of… Emily Dickinson (first lol moment).  But instead, he takes his puppet show about Abelard and Heloise to the streets to the outrage of a passing parent when its overt sexual themes come out.  His wife Lotte (played, astonishingly, by Cameron Diaz, in a complete departure from her usual “sexy free spirit” roles) who is a dowdy, frizzy-haired hippy type who loves animals to a pathological extreme (their house is overrun with them and she worries about getting the chimp psychoanalyzed), is sympathetic but wishes he would get an actual job.  Eventually he caves and, while finding nothing under “puppeteering” in the jobs section of the paper (another thing that dates the film), notices an odd advertisement for a “short statured” filer at an address that includes the floor number 7 ½ in an office building.  Getting in the lift he is puzzled to find that there is no button for that floor, but another passenger (who is now instantly recognizable as Octavia Spencer), noticing his puzzlement, guesses where he wants to go and shows him the method of getting there: you wait until the light in the 7 button goes out, but before the light in the 8 button goes on and you press the emergency stop button (causing a loud alarm to go off) and lever open the door with a crowbar that has been left for that purpose in the lift.  The resulting floor is about 4 ½ feet high, so everyone has to walk around doubled over.  (An explanation for the existence and height of the floor is given by an “orientation video” if you’re curious.)  We are soon introduced to Dr. Lester, who hires the impressively nimble-fingered Craig to do filing, and his secretary Floris, after whom the ancient Dr. Lester lusts, but who insists everyone has a speech defect (because she has a doctorate in “Speech Impedimentology” from Case Western) – she insists that Craig’s name is “Juarez”.  Craig soon settles in and is immediately smitten by Maxine, who works in another office on the floor and is plainly contemptuous of him.  She is interested however, when Craig discovers a portal (well, a muddy tunnel) behind a two-foot-tall door behind a filing cabinet in his office, which, when you crawl a ways into it, suddenly sucks you into the consciousness of… John Malkovich.  (The joke of the whole script is that John Malkovich was never a huge star, mostly a respected theater actor, when this was made, so it’s completely arbitrary that he should be the person named in the title.  But the mad genius Charlie Kaufman wrote the script that way and refused to change the name even when Hollywood came calling and demanding he pick a bigger star to get the film made (something Malkovich himself agreed would be better - he offered to direct if Kaufman would let, say, Tom Cruise be the actor).  So the script bounced around for awhile until a young director of pop videos and commercials, Spike Jonze, also became attached to it and they got Malkovich to do it.  Even the characters in the film don’t really know who he is – none of them can name an actual movie he’s been in.)  At first, you just get to experience things from Malkovich’s point of view (the first time Craig watches him eat toast, check his teeth in the mirror, walk out of his apartment building and into a taxi, where the driver first guesses his name is “Mapplethorpe,” then insists he’s seen him in “that jewel heist movie” – despite Malkovich’s insistence that he’s never been in any such film.  Then, after 15 minutes, you emerge (covered in mud) about 6 feet in the air above a ditch by the side of the New Jersey Turnpike (this is where we get a shot of the World Trade Center).  Craig immediately uses this experience to try to impress Maxine, and she decides to make money out of it by setting up a business open between midnight and 4 AM charging $200 a trip.  But actually the next person to try it is Lotte, who finds it a life-altering experience.  She so enjoys it that she decides it must mean she’s transsexual, which simply annoys Craig.  Everything gets more and more complicated: Maxine seduces Malkovich and has sex with him while Lotte is “in” him, and Lotte falls hard for Maxine.  But Maxine actually realizes because she can “see” somebody else behind Malkovich’s eyes, and so starts calling him Lotte while lovemaking, which both disturbs and arouses him.  Craig discovers this and becomes so enraged that he captures Lotte, forces her to tell Maxine she’s about to enter the portal so that Maxine goes to have a tryst with Malkovich, but then he enters the portal.  It turns out that Craig, being a puppeteer, discovers he can control Malkovich and soon trains himself to stay in Malkovich indefinitely.  He wins Maxine over and “Malkovich” switches careers to become a world-famous puppeteer.  Meanwhile Lotte discovers that “Dr. Lester” is actually the 19^th century builder of the office building who has been using the portal to switch bodies every 44 years and is not happy to learn that Craig has intercepted his next “vessel.”   Oh, and before Craig takes over, Malkovich himself goes down the portal into a nightmare world were everyone has his face, and the only word anyone can say is "Malkovich".

How are things resolved?  Well, let’s just say Craig’s fate is pretty pitiful, and perhaps worse even than he deserves. 

So what’s the message of this film?  Charlie Kaufman has a very negative view of existence in general, so I don’t think the message is simply “you should be yourself” or “don’t get caught up in the cult of celebrity” (because, of course, Malkovich is a pretty minor celebrity, and the film itself has some great celebrity cameos, from Charlie Sheen to Sean Penn), it might just be explicitly stated in a line that Craig delivers to the chimp early on in the film “You don’t know how lucky you are being a monkey, because consciousness is a terrible curse.”  And Craig himself discovers how much worse that curse can be without control over your life.

Should you watch it?  Of course you should – it’s a brilliant script, both hilarious and philosophical, quirkily adapted with John Malkovich gamely making himself look absolutely ridiculous.  Maybe watch Dangerous Liasons first to see why Malkovich is worth caring about in the first place.

Film review: Memento (2000)

We re-watched this film because I assigned it for my Philosophy in Film class for the section on personal identity and because I wasn’t sure how well I remembered it.  Turns out, appropriately enough, I had forgotten quite a few important details.  Plus it was good to watch such a perfectly constructed film.  I’m not sure it’s great cinema, but this film is a genius idea perfectly executed (Abre Los Ojos take note).  If you haven’t seen it – shame on you!  Go and watch it RIGHT NOW!  I think it’s clearly the best film by Christopher Nolan, who went on to be lauded for the Dark Knight Batman films (which I found frankly dull, apart from Heath Ledger’s Joker, of course, and he’s only on screen for a grand total of 33 minutes) and Inception, which I confess I have not seen.  But I can imagine that if you ever have an concept like the one behind Memento you will spend the rest of your career casting around for another one like it and never find it.  Here’s the basic idea: our “protagonist” is Leonard Shelby (played by Guy Pearce, who fakes a good American accent) who has a “condition” whereby he cannot create new short-term memories.  Maybe he was inspired by Clive Wearing, but Leonard can at least remember for about 5-10 minutes (the length seems to vary depending on what the plot needs).  He has perfect (or so he thinks) memories up to the night his wife was assaulted and killed, he shot one assailant, but the other one cracked him on the back of the head causing the brain damage.  Since that time he has been searching for the killer, and by the time we meet him he has amassed some “facts” about him (that he tattoos on his body so he won’t lose them), most notably that he is called John (or possibly James) and his last name begins with G, he is involved with drugs (possibly a dealer) and what his license plate number is.  The feature of Memento that really makes it, however, is the way the film is edited: Leonard’s life is, effectively, broken into discrete units of 5-10 minutes, but the film arranges them in reverse order, so we see the last one first and then work backwards.  This of course creates in the viewer the same effect that Leonard experiences: as each unit begins, you don’t know how Leonard got where he is or what just happened to him, the only difference being that you will soon find out, and he will never remember.  (I believe if you bought the DVD there was an option to watch the film in the correct chronological order, which would be worth doing to help make sense of it, but would make for an entirely unremarkable experience.) The film begins (/ends) with Leonard “realizing” that a guy “Teddy” is actually John G and, having taken him to a remote location, shooting him dead, thereby achieving justice for his dead wife.  Good news, right?  Well, that’s the point of the movie.  As we watch, we see that “Teddy” (whose real name is John Edward Gammell) hangs around Leonard a lot, and might be a cop.  We also see another character, Natalie (played by Carrie-Anne Moss of The Matrix fame) whom we first believe (as does he) is helping Leonard, but who is pretty soon revealed to be exploiting his condition for her own ends.  I don’t want to say too much – if you haven’t seen it, it’ll spoil it, and if you have, well, you know.  But some observations.  First, it’s become something of a trope for people to point out how many plots of classic movies are ruined by smartphones, and this is one of them.  Even though it was made in 2000, when phones could already record and take pictures (couldn’t they?) Leonard carries around a Polaroid camera (the opening scene of the film is the Polaroid he has taken of Teddy’s corpse developing – or actually, un-developing, because that one scene is shot in reverse, presumably to prepare us for the structure of the movie) and writes notes on the back of the pictures.  Teddy’s fate is sealed because on the back of his picture is written (in Leonard’s handwriting) “Don’t believe his lies” – and it’s not until the beginning of the film that you see why that was written there.  But if you could record what was going on, it would presumably avoid a lot of the problems in the film (in one key scene, for example, Leonard is desperate to make a note about how a character is really evil but will pretend to be otherwise but can’t find a pen in time).  The other thing I’d forgotten was the entire sub-plot about “Sammy Jankis,” a person whom Leonard investigated as part of his former (pre-incident) job as an insurance claims investigator (like Edward G. Robinson’s character in Double Indemnity).  He had a similar condition to the one Leonard ends up with, but unlike Leonard, cannot even condition himself.  That is, even if you can’t remember things, you can develop “muscle memory” so as to avoid (say) electrified objects in a test that you’ve taken before.  Sammy “can’t” do this, so Leonard concludes that his problem is really mental, not caused by brain damage, which couldn’t explain the lack of ability to condition himself.  This leads to tragedy, as Sammy’s wife (played by the woman who plays Frasier’s terrifying agent Bebe in Frasier) becomes convinced Sammy is faking and tests him by asking him to perform her insulin shot every five minutes instead of daily.  Leonard tells this story to everyone (he has “remember Sammy Jankis” tattooed on his hand) to illustrate that he is better than Sammy because he has conditioned himself to deal with his brain problem by force of habit.  But the last (i.e. chronologically first) scene of the movie (which is much longer than all the others) reveals how he is mis-remembering Sammy’s story.  And in fact, it reveals how much Leonard is the cause of his own predicament because he is prepared to manipulate things to see the world the way he wants it to be.  And I think it’s this message that makes Memento much more than simply a clever puzzle.
Now I think about it, Memento is a brilliant spin on Film Noir.  One of the defining features of Film Noir is the sense of fatalism, and this is often brought out by flashback and voiceover.  For example, in Noir classics like Double Indemnity, D.O.A., Out of the Past and Sunset Boulevard, you begin at the end, so to speak (like the narrator actually being the corpse floating in the pool at the opening of Sunset Boulevard, or the protagonist of D.O.A. walking into a police station to report a murder - his own) and then work backwards, the idea being that the "future" of the characters in the movie is set in stone.  Memento took that idea and ran with it.  Also, like Noir, everybody is out for themselves and there are no clean hands.  One scene I'd forgotten was when Leonard can't find his motel room key and asks the clerk on the front desk to let him in.  The guy lets him in to a room and then says "oops - this isn't your room" - but Leonard finds a bag with his handwriting on it and asks why that's there if it's not his room.  Refreshingly blunt, the clerk admits that, on finding out about his condition, he (or "his boss") decided to keep renting him new rooms every day so they could soak him for as much money as possible.  Of course he can admit this because he knows Leonard will forget in 5 minutes.  So in that respect, having Leonard in your life is like having a very localized Ring of Gyges.  He's a test of character.  And everyone eventually fails it.  And the one who took the longest to fail pays the worst price.