Of Angels and Seagulls: We keep secrets from ourselves and call it 'forgetting'

That was one of the good lines from the movie Trance by Danny Boyle. I watched it last week, thinking that it is like Christopher Nolan's Inception.

It is not. Trance is unpredictably violent, which was revealed in the middle until the end of the movie. I am actually more interested on how the hypnotherapist, Dr. Elizabeth Lamb, sends her patients into trance - a semiconscious state. I wonder how hypnosis works, how the therapist performs it and how it is to be tranced. I also wonder if repressing a certain memory and replacing it with a new one, with a desire (as done by Dr. Lamb in the movie) through hypnosis is possible, or if anyone has ever tried it. And if that is possible, I think there will be people who will come to hypnotherapist to forget seemingly horrible experiences that they had. But I guess the memories are still there, only hidden. Anyway, Trance is actually more about how far one would go to be redeemed of his/her past.

Simon, played by James McAvoy

After seeing Trance, I decided to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (for the third time, I guess) because it is also about forgetting, but with a completely different theme, of course. I still enjoy this movie even if it has been almost a decade when it was released. It reminds me how quick it is for people to decide that they don't want a certain person, or a memory in their life, so much that they would like it be erased and ~~never~~ be remembered. But if you think it through, if you will reevaluate it, those experiences that we want to forget are essential in our lives. There are always things to learn from every experience, whether good or bad. We might not realize some things about ourselves if we did not go through them. The best thing to do is try as much to live with our scars, because after all, our choices are half chance.