ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
Directed by: Michel Gondry
Internet Movie
Database Entry for full details
GRADE: A- (3.3/4)
2004.
Eternal Sunshine…, as
lazy people everywhere refer to it, uses science fiction to breathe
some life into that trite and tired old adage, courtesy Lord Tennyson,
“’tis better to have loved and lost than never to
have loved at all.” Jim Carrey, in his finest
performance to date, plays Joel, an artist who discovers his recent
ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has undergone a procedure in
which all her memories of him have been literally erased from her
mind. He decides, tit-for-tat, to do the same. (Joel first
asks if the procedure carries any risk of brain damage, to which the
doctor replies, "technically the procedure is brain damage.")
Much of the action is set inside Joel’s mind, which plays
well since the depiction of spatially illogical memoryspace seems
perfectly suited to the filmic medium. Director Gondry leaps
between Joel’s memories of Clementine as they are being
erased and literally disintegrating (cf. props and characters disappear
from the screen, sets collapse, and dialogue, intentionally, doesn’t synch up to the actors’ lip
movements) as though they were all on a linear spatiotemporal plane. It’s Annie Hall being run
backwards through a projector that's on fire. As
Joel’s mind becomes increasingly confused so too does the
film’s imagery: it starts raining in an apartment, or Joel
and Clementine awake in bed and find themselves in the middle of a
beach.
Charlie
Kaufman’s script, an intriguing concept executed
marvelously, is peppered with clever dialogue and a universal theme
about
the preciousness of memories, even those that are banal, sad, painful,
or all three. Like any movie that involves time travel, any film
about a man's
journey through his brain during the process of a memory erasure is
going to have its share of coherency issues, but they are easily
overlooked
here for the sake of the affecting and absorbing drama. To get
bogged down in details or logistics would be to miss the point.
Carrey has shown a range deeper than that displayed in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls in
recent years, in films like The Truman Show and The Majestic, but he has
never before been at once so effusive and yet, thankfully (because remember who
we’re dealing with here), restrained. Kate
Winslet’s performance, further confirming her place as a virtuosic
maestro, moves with incredible believability between frenetic spontaneity and disheveled dolor, like Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut.
Ultimately a terribly cynical portrait of modern romance, every relationship in Eternal Sunshine...
is presented as flawed, damaged, and doomed to
failure. Somehow, though, we come to realize we wouldn’t
trade that misery for anything in the world, not even to jump
around
naked with Kirsten Dunst. The film itself doesn't make this
explicitly clear, instead relying heavily on the manipulation of the
personal emotional memories of its audience. It doesn't set out
to prove that 'tis better to have loved and lost... as it already assumes it to be true. Normally that kind of thing would bother me, but Eternal Sunshine... is just too moving and otherwise well-executed. --
Henry Stewart
