.<\/FONT><\/P>
\nGuy on line asks me, “Like it?”
“Loved it.”
Guy next to me says,
\n“I didn’t like it at all.”
“Why not?”
“Badly directed. No suspense. I didn’t care about the
\ncharacters.”
“That’s three strikes. What films have you liked?”
It takes him a while.
\n“The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.”
“That’s 40 years ago. Nothing more recent?”
Guy
\nstares at me. He’s still thinking when it’s my turn at the urinal. End of conversation.<\/FONT><\/P>
\nIn the scheme of things, neither Edelstein’s rave in Slate nor my conversation
\nin the men’s room means much. (“Ripley’s Game” hasn’t even had a commercial release.) But the
\ncritical hype for “Spotless Mind” has led to some peculiar conclusions, like the one that
\nsums up a lengthy disquisition on the science of <\/FONT>memory
\nerasure<\/EM><\/FONT><\/B><\/A>, which is the key to that flick:<\/FONT><\/P>
\nWhile the culture frets over the perils of high-tech erasure,
\nwe should really be worrying about the opposite: what will happen when we remember too
\nmuch.<\/FONT><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\nUntil I read that, I hadn’t realize the culture was fretting about such
\nperils. I thought it was fretting about the perils of Iraq, the economy, gay marriage, bared breasts,
\ncorporate corruption and the W Ltd. gang. I guess I’ll have to add high-tech
\nmemory erasure to the list. I<\/FONT>f you want to know the truth, I thought my
\nproblem was plain, low-tech forgetting. Like what did I do with my glasses? Oh, there they are,
\non the bridge of my nose.<\/FONT><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Slate’s rave notice for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” makes me cringe with disbelief. “This is the best movie I’ve seen in a decade,” David Edelstein wrote, and he had lots of company from critics across the spectrum. There’s no accounting for taste and all that. But it reminds me of a recent conversation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-9U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}