Margaritas & miaows

The persistence of Memory

So, how cool is our memory – and there is all sorts of it as science and this movie I just saw on the weekend (ummm, how sober am I???) Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind.

The basic premise is the blank mind is a happy mind – like you know the saying “Ignorance is Bliss”. The movie starts with the present – a reserved Jim Carrey bunks work for the day and goes to the beach on a cold wintery day and bumps into a fiery-haired Kate Winslet.

Their relationship is balanced by his reserve and her kookiness, till their basic personalities start grating on the other person instead of being amazing because it is so different. Then the impulsive one - Kate Winslet, goes to a futuristc cosmetic surgery kind of place – only instead of botoxing away your wrinkles, this place erases your memories of the person who caused you pain, grief whatever… ergo giving you back happy happy blank blank!!!

Then Jim Carrey wants to do the same when he find out that Kate has erased him – only to find that umm, the eternal truth relationships that give you your biggest highs are the same ones that give you the greatest unhappiness. And that he does not want to lose Kate Winslet’s memory after all. It’s so cool to watch his mind struggle to hide away the memories and the ‘doctors’ trying to zap away the memory and figure out why the system wont work.

This movie has great performances by everyone – I though Kate Winslet was obvious so why nominate her??? I preferred sexy Kirsten Dunst prancing away in her undies and a boyvest.

And then this movie is making me think (dangerous????) about all the relationships – isn’t it obvious that the one’s I am happiest with will also cause me the greatest grief? This applies to everyone I am closely invested in, because I give them the power – to make me laugh, make me cry, to learn from and give to. So, suppose I am really really pissed off with the Husband and get him erased – will I also lose my adoration of kittens, something I never had before I met him (trust me) Will I wonder why I now prefer to run mind-blanking number of rounds rather than do aerobic jumping to eighties music, my preferred workout pre-Husband. And and what about Bar Night – will I magically also forget about cheep alcohol?

And what if I meet him again, when I am 35? (And he is 41yrold – hehehhehe.) Will we make the same choices – is attraction then wired into a different brain bit from the ones which will hold the memories of that attraction?

Also on separate note on memory – and association. After seeing RDB – I heard Rubaroo on the radio and actually listened to the lyrics. And the scene came back to me and boy I had goosey-bumps at 10.30 in the morning, driving through Juhu garage lane, trying to run over rickshaw drivers, without any liability to me. So…. Good movie!!! And not just for Kunal Kapoor – I think the next three non-alcohol months will be very enriching experience for me and Movie Empire.

posted by Nish @ 12:03 PM