Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Directed by Michel Gondry
Written by Charlie Kaufman
Starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson
Release Date March 19th, 2004
Published March 18th, 2004
Jim Carrey's attempts to move into “legitimate acting" are often maligned even before they are seen, even by people who call themselves fans. It seems that whenever someone leaves their comfortable, often-mediocre niche we Americans have set aside for them. We go out of our way to shove them back in with harsh and often unfair conjecture. Jim Carrey is a very obvious victim of this niche society.
His latest attempt to escape his niche is the Charlie Kaufmann scripted Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Carrey plays a somber, sweet, romantic lost soul while Kaufmann's script provides the weirdness that Carrey usually provides with his physical schtick.
Carrey is Joel Barish who one day decides to blow off work and take a train to his favorite beach. Nevermind that its winter. On the train ride back, Joel meets Clementine (Kate Winslet), an acid-tongued wild child with an obvious sweetness beneath her punk veneer. They begin a tentative flirtation that is about to lead to Joel's bed when suddenly the opening credits roll and the film begins again.
From there, we are lost in a time warp of Joel's memories and sadness. After Joel and Clementine broke up, Clementine went to a place called Lacuna Corp and had all of her memories of Joel erased. Out of spite, Joel goes to Lacuna to do the same to her. With the guidance of Lacuna's founder Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) and his staff, Joel is told that all of his relationship can be eliminated with a procedure that is technically brain damage, but is only “on par with a night of heavy drinking.”
Joel agrees to the procedure, which is to take place in his apartment while he sleeps. A pair of Lacuna technicians (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) come to Joel's apartment after he's asleep and spend the night erasing his memory. Once Joel is actually undergoing the process, he realizes there are some memories of Clementine he does not want to give up. His fight to save some of those good memories is the thrust of the plot.
Who doesn't have a relationship that they would consider erasing from their memory? For me it would be Michele, my high school girlfriend. We were together for three years as a couple and several years as friends afterwards. We loved and we hated in almost equal measure the entire time we've known each other. For all of the pain that she caused me and I caused her there are a number of really good times that I would not be willing to give up. That is the central theme of the film and the way it's explored on the screen is not just the film projecting emotion on to the audience. Rather, the audience is a participant in the emotion.
The film is not exactly as straightforward as I describe it. Writer Charlie Kaufmann and director Michel Gondry have a number of unique twists and turns that make Eternal Sunshine an amazing, mind-bending experience. It's an old school science-fiction storytelling device using technology, in this case a rather low-tech technology, to tell a very human story. Sci-fi without aliens or complicated special effects, sci-fi just used to tell a good story in a very different way.
This is a rather uncomplicated, almost simplistic way to write a relatable story. Painful breakups are a universal experience and Kaufmann uses that universality as a jumping off point to a different way to tell a sad, romantic story. There have been movies that explored the same themes of love and loss. What Kaufmann does is what the best modern screenwriters do, take a conventional idea and twist it. Plots that have been done to death can still be done well if you give them at least one unique twist.
With the help of a Michel Gondry's visual mastery, Charlie Kaufmann found more than one unique twist he could give to the love and loss story, the romantic comedy and the sci-fi picture. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a film that should be shown in film classes for years to come as inspiration for original ideas from traditional sources.
For Jim Carrey, this is yet another brilliant performance that will go unnoticed. The film is unlikely to make many waves at the box office and despite positive critical notice, the March release of the film dooms its Oscar hopes. Carrey can still take heart however in the one truth of great art. It's never appreciated in it's own time. Maybe years from now someone will dig this film out of a vault with barely a memory of Carrey's schtick and discover Carrey's talent.
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