Blessed are the Forgetful

Ever since I first watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I said it was one of my favorite movies, even though I'd only seen it once.  I was never quite sure, though, if it was legal to call a movie one of your favorites if you'd only seen it once.  Today, I finally saw it again after at least a two year break.  And it lived up to its billing after one view.  I still love this movie.  The idea is original, it features Jim Carrey, and it possesses that perfect dosage of reality with a fantastical side.  The scene where Joel and Clementine are in the beach house while the tide and sand comes in as the house crumbles blew my mind the first time I saw it because it was so...I don't know how to describe it; the only way to understand it is to watch the movie.  Not just the scene, the whole movie.

The movie plays through Joel's memories of Clementine in reverse, with life afterwards as bookends to the winding road through regrets and reminisces.  The movie rummages through Joel's brain and tosses what it finds into your hands for you to cling to as Joel lets go.  I get sucked into Joel's perspective because I can't help but see myself in him, more than I'm comfortable with. What exactly I see, I'm not sure, but he often reminds me of me. Meanwhile, he's so helpless, so cautionary, such a victim in his mind.  His frailty feels familiar.  His struggle is so aching.  Its as if Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" alone could have been the soundtrack.

Taglines describe it as romantic, comical, and poignant.  Poignant, yes.  The other two? Depends how you define them.

Tragic.

Tragic is the way I feel when I watch this movie.  Because I think this movie is a tragedy.  Not a weeping demolition of the human spirit  tragedy, but something else.  Reaching out for something as it's slipping away.   Desperation and fear and insecurity and helplessness quietly sneaking in and stowing away in your basement. Cutting down a thick oak tree to plant a seed in its place.   Watching a heart being broken in reverse, from its final intertwined string being pulled out to the first unwinding of its delicate lacing.  So poetic, so sad.

So hopeful.  Joel and Clementine duke it out in reality and his memories, but at the end they try to hold on as long as they can.  After the truth comes out, the new seed seems to be smothered.  But after everything, they still hold on to the vacant space where their love used to be.