Charlie Kaufman represents everything that is wrong with contemporary Hollywood. Discuss.
Across his films - and I'm taking Kaufman as screenwriter-auteur here: Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (note the signficantly recurring word) - Charlie Kaufman has presented us with a series of images of the mind-as-labyrinth allowing for a number of pseudo-experimental narrative pirouettes. My question is: what motivates these images? Is it a celebration of the terrifying power of the mind in and for itself, à la Deleuze? Is it a desire to make the world a better place for such minds to develop and deploy themselves? Or is is simply a desire to make a lot of money out of Hollywood? I'm inclined to think the latter, and Hollywood is merely too short-sighted to realize that Eternal Sunshine is simply an inside-out replica of Alejandro Amenabar's Abre los ojos (1997), itself already (badly) remade in Hollywood as Vanilla Sky (2001).
In fact, Eternal Sunshine constitutes a rather sweet love story with some terrific dialogue, and all the mind-fuckery tends only to get in the way. But it exists in a culture in which love and life are not considered of sufficient value in themselves. In this context, the quotation from Nietzsche that recurs pointedly in the film comes across as something of an insult...
Douglas Morrey
Lecturer in French
School of Modern Languages
University of Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU
Tel: +44 (0)191 2227489
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