Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is definitely not a film that can be watched passively. As I watched it, my mind was flooded with questions of perception, consciousness, and reality as I tried to understand this complex piece. First and foremost, this film had me questioning reality more than anything else. Many cognitive film theorists stress the importance of the relationship between film and mental perception rather than the relationship between film and reality, and Eternal Sunshine certainly encompasses this ideal.

            Maya Deren wrote about how reality is simply a mental concept; we perceive things as real by relating them to past experiences and learned expectations. I struggled with this theory quite a bit, but I had an epiphany during the film that cleared things up for me. Reality is a something we all deal with and relate to, but who is to say that we all experience the same realities?  At first as I watched the dream sequences, with Clementine and Joel hiding from extraction, existing in an inconceivably realistic world of imagination, I found myself being slightly skeptical of the film. The more I watched though, the more I was struck by the honesty and believability of its premise. The film presented phenomenon that you would not encounter in everyday life, things that could only be present in a dream. However, why should a dream be perceived as any less realistic than real life? My thoughts, my dreams, are real to me inside my head, and they are indeed a part of my every day reality. My reality is unique to me. Reality and identity are simply mental constructs, not physical substances.

Cinema has so much value and potential for expression because, unlike other arts, it retains tangible aspects of reality that we can relate to while appealing to the more intimate aspects of the spectator- emotions, imagination, memories- to create a cinematic world that is unique to each viewer. In Eternal Sunshine, I watched as Joel was asked relive the memories evoked by different objects as Stan watched the MRI and extracted them. Joel is flooded with memories of Clementine as he looks as these seemingly insignificant objects- odd potato figurines and abstract drawings- that, to most people, would mean nothing. But to Joel, these mementos mean everything to him. In that aspect, we, the spectator, are like Joel. We watch a film and each individual spectator is flooded with memories, thoughts, musings, all based on our individual pasts.

This just makes me think about, really and truly, how important the spectator is in cinema. Film is so subjective and the consciousness of the individual spectator shapes how they perceive the film. The active spectator accepts the impression of reality and depth the film presents and derives meaning from it, despite their inherent awareness of the film’s distance from reality. For example, when Joel first sees Clementine in Barnes & Noble and she acts as if she does not know him, it appears as a believable, realistic scene. Then, as Joel walks down the aisles of books, the lights above him start going off one-by-one, and all of a sudden Joel is back in Rob and Carrie’s house.  The viewer is jolted, quickly forced to accept that he or she is not in for a perfectly conventional and linear love story. Once the spectator accepts this, the film’s blending of reality and the supernatural takes on new meaning and the viewer can make his or her own interpretation of the story.

Joel and Clementine themselves demonstrate this phenomenon of how a spectator can adapt and personalize cinema to suit his or her own purposes and experiences. In the dream sequence, at one point, Joel and Clementine find themselves in the memory of a night spent at the drive-in theater. Clem and Joel jokingly dub over the voices of the actors on screen, giving them ridiculous lines and accents. Joel and Clementine, demonstrating Lindsay’s idea that conversation among the audience was beneficial to cinema, use their own methods and imaginations to create a whole new experience and interpretation of the film.

As a spectator, my past experiences and preconceived notions shaped my reception of the film. I kept finding myself thinking about how unconventional Clementine was in her approach to dating; bad romantic comedies and learned social conventions have taught me to react to a woman telling a man “I’m going to marry you” on the first day they met with horror. Similarly, my trite notions of Valentine’s Day had me analyzing the significance of Joel and Clementine’s meeting in Montauk on February 14^th. However, then I realized that my notions were just that: notions, not fact or law.

Once I accepted that, I fully realized how subtly and irrevocably we as humans are influenced by everything we come into contact with. With so many aspects of life that yield to your expectations and stereotypes, it is refreshing to be exposed to things that surprise you. Cinema’s beauty lies in its potential to incorporate aspects of reality with aspects of creativity and imagination. Like Joel’s experience of Déjà vu in Eternal Sunshine, the relationship between reality and creativity is so complexly intertwined that we, the spectator, should experience a feeling of déjà vu when we view a film; it should be an experience so close to our reality, but at the same time, so enigmatic and innovative, that we are awed and inexplicably altered by our contact with it.

Maya Deren stressed cinema’s uniqueness in that it is the only art that cannot be totally controlled; it can be guided by the filmmaker, but will always be affected by the spontaneous and uncontrollable aspects of life. The “controlled accident” transcends into the story of Eternal Sunshine. In the ultimate “controlled accident”, we see Mary fall in love with Howard again after her procedure, and of course, we see Clementine and Joel reunite, despite their troubles. In this way,  fate surpasses all other forces and takes precedence. No matter how much other forces attempt to interfere, nature and its “controlled accident” will always prevail.

The Machinist (2004)

My motivation to watch The Machinist, if I’m being honest, is not because I’d heard it was a great film; in fact, it had nothing to do with the film at all. My boyfriend and I went through a kick where we were obsessed with actors and actresses who lost or gained large amounts of weight in a short amount of time. Obviously, Christina Bale’s ghastly 60-pound weight loss for this film and subsequent gain of 100 pounds for Batman Begins in just five (!!) months intrigued us.

Yo-yo dieting to the max

Here’s an article of anyone’s interested: http://www.businessinsider.com/extreme-weight-loss-and-gain-for-movie-roles-2012-7?op=1

The film is definitely a mindfuck, and right up my alley. I love films that play with psychology, subjectivity, and memory; even more that, I love twists and The Machinist did not let me down. The temporal structure of the film is complex and reminds me a bit of Memento. It begins at the end, with Trevor Reznik (Christina Bale) trying to dispose of a body in the ocean. As he tries to roll the body into the sea, the old rug he has the corpse wrapped in unravels to reveal that there is nothing inside. From there, confusions abounds and builds to the close of the film, when the extent of Trevor’ mental repression and depravity is fully understood.

#manorexia

The film’s editing is rapidly paced, giving an added air of suspense to the already dark plot and desaturated world that Trevor is trapped in. The film is also edited in such a way that temporality is ambiguous; as the movie progresses, it is difficult to tell how much story time has passed since the start of the film. This ambiguity is further emphasized by the use of clocks in the film, for example, the broken clock in the airport that constantly flashes 1:30. (IMDB Trivia fun fact: the clocks are stuck at 1:30 because the plot twist occurs 1 hour and 30 minutes into the film).

Mirror, mirror, on the wall. I’m the guiltiest one of all.

The continued use of mirrors and reflective surface played nicely into the identity crisis that Trevor undergoes throughout the film. The opening shot looks in on Trevor through the window; the reflection of the city lights is crystal clear while Trevor is out of focus as we struggle to make out what he is doing (rolling up the body in the carpet). As the film progresses, there is an abundance of shots of Trevor looking at his gaunt reflection in the mirror. The revelation that Ivan does not exist and is in fact a figment of his hallucination that he has created to project his own guilt onto gives added depth to these reflective (and indeed, reflexive) shots. The ghost haunting Trevor is himself, his own guilty conscience.

Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!

Another manifestation of Trevor’s that I found intriguing was his compulsion to scrub his hands with bleach. I read this as a Shakespearean allusion to Lady Macbeth’s hysterical washing of the blood from her hands (a literary allusion that pairs nicely with the Dostoyevsky references in the film)

Maria and Son

Mama Reznik and Trevor

            An interesting aspect of the film to me was Trevor’s projection of “Maria”, the mother of the boy Trevor hit with his car, onto the coffee waitress. I interpreted this imagined relationship with Maria as Trevor’s way of trying to reconcile the loss he caused her by giving himself to her to be loved; he is the replacement for the son she lost because of him. This is further underscored by the parallel drawn between Maria and her son at the carnival and the picture of Trevor with his mother that he finds in an old photo album. Trevor and his mother stand in the exact same place as Maria and her son; this gives the imagined relationship with Maria a hint of an oedipal complex. Trevor is the replacement for the son Maria lost and Maria is fulfilling the motherly role and providing Trevor with the unconditional love he lost with the death of his mother (granted Maria is all a part of Trevor’s hallucination, obviously, but you get my drift).

All in all, I found this movie to be a fascinating exploration of repression and the pain we can cause ourselves in failing to deal with our own guilt. Despite the confusing structure of the film and twist at the end, the film wraps itself up nicely into a nice, cohesive package that answers all your questions but leaves the spectator reeling at the end. I also love that the film was too dark to be picked up by an American studio and thus was produced by a Spanish production company. Sometimes you have to get away from Hollywood to push the boundaries.