Eternal sunshine, memory snd identity

Recently I saw 'The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'. I was surprised to discover that, while it had moments of lightness, it was more serious than Jum Carrey in the star role led me to expect. And I'm not criticizing that; I enjoyed the film.

What I found interesting about it all on reflection is noting that memory and identity seem to be in the public domain in film around now: we also had Memento recently, for example, as well as being a theme in some TV shows. Not to mention Arnie's Martian film a few years back....

It seems to me the message is, in part at least; who we are is partly about who we remeber ourselves to be, or who we beleive ourselves to be on the basis of what we think we remeber. Is there a certain anxiety about this as we begin to process culturally the knowledge flowing from studies on false memory etc, that memory is somewhat fragile; are we who we think? IF we do not learn from the past are we condemned to repeat it? -Even if we can't remember it?

Eternal Sunshine picks up this last thought in that it seems that the main characters and two of the supporting characters seem to have something other than memory that reconnects them to people they have loved and 'had made forgotten'. The thesis, if we could call it that, is that something of who we are is not just about particular memories.

Of course the other thing that comes over is how hard it is to unpick a piece of our life from the rest of our life; the multitudinous interconnections and cross-references. It is interesting that Lacuna is the name of the memory-altering company. Yet creating a lacuna is seen to be a very exacting thing requring co-operation from friends and family so that nothing is mentioned that could set one back on the road of memory recovery.

Part of the plot revolves around the morality of doing such things, and in case you haven't seen it, I will leave it at that.

As a Christian I welcome things that help us think about identity and memory and encourage a wholistic thinking about life. It seems to me that identity before God offers a way beyond, to some extent, the anxiety of identity which is founded on little more than what passes away [the mortal clothed in immortatlity]. There is also an implicit question mark here against popular notions of re-incarnation. I think that reflecting on this film could help us to engage certain themes in new age and certain trends in western appropriation of Buddhism.