Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: B+
BY PATRICIA DRAZNIN
AN AVALANCHE OF memories tumbles across the screen while characters
and backdrops collapse, like movie sets, and suddenly vanish. We are witnessing
the erasure of the relationship of Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet)
that ended abruptly and painfully after two years. To get over Joel, Clementine
calls on Lacuna, Inc., where they have “perfected a safe, effective technique
for the focused erasure of troubling memories.” When Joel realizes that
Clementine doesn’t remember him, his pain propels him to erase her, too.
But lying in his induced state while Lacuna technicians expunge Clementine
from his mind, he suddenly tries to resist the process, to hold on to his precious
memories of being in love.
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being
John Malkovich, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) has a knack for posing the “What if” question
and running with it. Scattering the sequence to deliver the events as
Joel recalls them, Kaufman tells the surreal story of two wildly opposite
personalities falling in love. Joel is introverted and private, a self-declared
boring guy. Clementine is passionate and impulsive, with a penchant for
wearing unexpected colors like tangerine clothing and blue hair.
Carrey plays his most powerful dramatic role ever—a restrained
and lonely man who longs to love and be loved. This is hardly the persona
that comes to mind when we think of Jim Carrey. Yet we can only praise
director Michel Gondry for harnessing the possibilities. Carrey the
wild man gets squeezed down into a troubled soul who feels embarrassed
by his own discomfort. But his straight role is laced with just enough
comic relief to spike the story, as only Carrey can, including childhood
memories that translate into Alice in Wonderland scenes of a tiny boy
hiding under a huge kitchen table or bathing in the kitchen sink.
The film’s gripping tension sags during weak performances from
three young Lacuna staff members. But never mind. From the opening scenes—where
the ex-lovers turned strangers meet on a commuter train—to the
apt closing musical score by Beck, the fictitious story poses a host
of real questions, not just about love, but about destiny versus human
intervention. It also suggests that all of our memories—even the
painful ones—are meant to be there. Eternal
Sunshine delivers
a powerful memory worth keeping.
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