Brain Damage

I usually stay away from reading too carefully reviews of movies I am very excited to see. This was generally the case of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I liked the look of mostly from the trailer at the start of the Lost in Translation DVD. I was an early pooper upon Being John Malkovich–enough that I didn’t bother seeing Adaptation until last month–so the idea of my getting excited about a Charlie Kaufman flick must strike everyone as slightly odd. Well, casting Kirsten Dunst makes weird things happen.

In any case, before seeing this movie, I skimmed two reviews: Anthony Lane’s plot-revealing and ulitmately weird work in The New Yorker, and Stephanie Zacharek’s breezier yet more emotionally wrought F1 in Salon. My skimming of the latter, as a result, led me to missing this bit from the last paragraph, discussing the plot-breaking insertions of the Lacuna subplots:

Did Kaufman, or Kaufman and Gondry, construct the movie as they did simply so audiences wouldn’t leave the theater feeling too devastated to engage in conversation, let alone a cocktail or a cappuccino?

It took a self-administered full pitcher of Pabst Blue Ribbon at the Old Town Ale House before I could engage in conversation. “Devastating” is a very, very good word for how one reacts to this movie. I was accused of being “sappy” last night, but, well, the accuser had been wiping far more tears off her face than I had, so who knows what kind of fierce defense mechanisms built into our hardened-by-the-90s hipster persona are triggered by something as, well, devastating as this movie.

In fact, the leaving of the theater was, in and of itself, a tricky bit of theater because of running into fresh-faced acquaintances readying up for the 9pm showing (all told, at Piper’s Alley, I ran into three distinct sets of friends that night). We had to hide our flush faces and red eyes from the general, painfully hip queue of people eager maybe for the lazy “interesting” quirks and mind puzzles that characterise BJM and Adaptation. There was a desire to leave them unprepared for the cold sentimental fish to the face they were about to get.

But I’ll warn you, my reader base, since you have the chance to make some plans before you see this movie. Do not, do not, see this movie with an ex. Unless said ex is someone with whom you are very interested in jumping back into bed. Or, rather, more precisely, unless you are ready for the complete night’s worth of emotional fuckery that anything resembling talking about this movie afterward with someone you sort of lived through the movie with in your own terms will provide.

However, do see this movie. If this flick signals the final nail driven in the hipster/detached coffin, sign me up to wail the hammer down. Don’t be surprised if this movie ushers in an era of the blogosphere’s being covered in hasty transcriptions of Cure lyrics from the very late 80s. Don’t be suprised if any number of cultural signifiers built upon the most painful artifice (jesus, you should have seen the hair some guys were sporting at this movie…) start drifting away as people retreat into simple sweater and slacks outfits with watch caps hiding hair that is merely uncombed. Don’t be surprised if a nation of twentysomethings careens out into the streets over the next few months, drops the pretension, and goes to work. Don’t be surprised.

But before I go any further, I want to set up some spoiler space. So here it is.

Most of what I took from the Lane review, other than the revealing of the plot twists surrounding Patrick and Mary, was the turn of phrase at the end when Lane suggests that Kaufman and Gondry can’t tie the movie together.

[W]hen the movie, almost as an afterthought, asks [Mary] to wreak revenge, it seems too strong for so mild a character. Indeed, as in “Adaptation,” this Kaufman script grows so manic in pursuit of its own tail that it continues to lash when it should be wrapping itself up in a neat knot; Gondry and Kaufman could have ended the story where it began, but they cannot deny themselves the shudder of a final twist.

Lane’s reviews are often a little airy and pretentious–but in a good way–and at least he likes good movies and doesn’t like bad ones, unlike David Denby. But the detachment shown in this review, shown also in the above paragraph, suggests that maybe Lane wasn’t paying much attention to the movie. Or, maybe, it shows that he was sobbing so much he couldn’t focus.

I suppose he means by “final twist” the listening of the audio cassettes, if not the Dunst act of revenge in its entirety. And there’s a degree to which he’s right–it does feel tacked on. But that’s sort of the point. The movie couldn’t have anything resembling a happyish ending without it. Already it clearly doesn’t have a happy ending–those weren’t tears of happiness every motherfucker in the theater shed. Those were tears of devastation. How one could not be completely worked over during the scene under the blanket is beyond me. Bullocks man is a rational animal. It’s an animal that loves. The total overfucking of issues of intimacy in this movie guarantee that you’ll be completely screwed out at the end of it. Like I said, a whole pitcher. And even then, I still wanted to get on a plane immediately. And even after a full, pleasant night after the movie, I still got home, shuddered a bit in bed, and wished to hell it wasn’t so late (or so early…) that I couldn’t start making phone calls.

Steve Witt once told me that the greatest crime a guy can commit (though I suppose this goes both ways) is the crime of “ex-girlfriend recidivism.” “You think that it’s a fresh start, or that you know what to avoid, and you get lulled into it,” he explained (in paraphrase), “but ultimately you start off right where you left off: when you hated each other so much that you broke up.” Steve was speaking from experience. I can, too. In fact, I bet anyone here can. Anyone with tears in their eyes in Theater 2 at Piper’s Alley last night can. And the promise–the happy ending signalled as soon as we start putting together the pieces of the role of the beginning of the flick in the narrative–is supposed to be possible because of Lacuna. Or is it? We feel like somehow, intuitively, Joel and Clementine won’t fuck up their relationship this time around (that’s what we hang on to throughout the movie, at least). They’ll somehow know. And when the tapes come in the mail, that’s a twisted gesture that’s supposed to, paradoxically, guarantee that they won’t fuck it up–they already know what ruined things in the first place.

But it can’t be so. It simply can’t. Even Clementine, who seems to have had an unbotched erasing, still has traces that make her realise something odd about Patrick. So this isn’t quite about something as obvious as not being able to step in the same river twice, then, as it is about being able to reincorporate the same river into two episodes (a much less elegant analogy, I know). As the beach house is collapsing around them (and o god what a great scene that is), we are all cheering for them to somehow change–to somehow guarantee that all those horrible, horrible tears from the start of the movie as well as the desire to fucking erase part of yourself would never crop up again. But we know that’s a ridiculous guarantee. Those tears will come again. Just like they are right now.

OK, I’m having trouble finishing this. So I’ll write about Kirsten Dunst. She still blows my mind. I am starting to really get angry at the people who hate on her. Sure she made some silly teen movies when she was a teen. But Bring It On wasn’t one of them. Furthermore, she was great in Crazy / Beautiful and showed comic genius in The Cat’s Meow. And that comic timing comes over in spades in this flick. She and David Cross easily steal every scene they are in, which is tricky, considering Cross shares the screen with (an albeit subdued) Jim Carrey, and Dunst with a surprisingly good Mark Ruffalo. Lane smugly suggests that Dunst is so good at acting high that she must be very, very used to it. He’s joking, of course, but he should be giving praise–anyone who can call Natalie Portman’s genius turn (probably never to be topped in her career) in Beautiful Girls one of the best performances of the ’90s should be able to come out and say that Kirsten Dunst is probably the best actors of her generation. She sparkles in the movie, but, then, so does everyone. But I like her the most…

Shit, during all this typing, the line on Duke fell to -11. No matter. I’m still taking it.