Are scientists on the brink of learning how to erase memories.
The great dread of our age is the insidious onset of Alzheimer's disease, the inexorable loss of the very memories that constitute our individuality, our personhood. Big pharmaceutical companies are investing massively in drugs which might retard or even prevent the decline and preserve the failing memory. Yet, suppose our memories are painful, bringing back painful experiences. Might it be possible to erase them, wipe them out as cleanly as pressing the delete button on a computer?
This is the central scientific premise to the new film from the writer of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The central characters in Kaufman's film aren't exactly blameless vestals, but are recoiling from their unhappy love affair, and so each in turn visits a lab (Lacuna Inc) where neurotechnicians endeavour to wipe out recollection of their troubled relationship. The wordy title is a line from a poem by Alexander Pope; the previous lines run: "How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot".
The film plays neatly with the enigmatic nature of memory, and the impossibility of separating the continuous stream of our recollections into "files" that can be tidily dissected and removed.
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