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ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF
THE SPOTLESS MIND
by Peter Sobczynski

March 19, 2004

(out of 4 stars)

FILM CREDITS: Written by Charlie Kaufman. Directed by Michel Gondry. Starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo and Tom Wilkinson.

Do you suppose other aspiring screenwriters, the ones who snipe at anyone else's sudden success with a dismissive "Hey, I could have come up with that idea!" between shifts at Kinko's, are jealous of the work of Charlie Kaufman, the author of such infamous scripts as "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation"? Somehow, I suspect not. The work of someone like Quentin Tarantino, for example, has its roots in such instantly recognizable areas that some could convince themselves that they could have done the same thing (although the rash of dreadful knockoffs proved otherwise). Kaufman's screenplays, on the other hand, are so singular and off-the-wall that even the pettiest scribe can only just sit there dumbfounded and impressed that he can pull them off with such seeming ease. This is why you haven't seen any knock-offs of his ideas clogging multiplexes; they are so audacious that they even resist cloning and the only way that someone could be like him would be to be come up with something completely original in their own right.

I am inspired to write these thoughts after having seen the latest film based on one of his screenplays, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". The film itself is brilliant, an endlessly clever, funny and strangely moving story that will leave viewers with a warm heart and smoke curling out of their ears. However, the thing that is so astonishing about it is the fact that it is, at its core, a clean and simple story about ordinary human desires and weaknesses that anyone can recognize. This is the heart of the story and the fact that it is the thing that stands out in a film that, on the surface, plays like a romantic-comedy riff on "Memento" and "Total Recall" makes it all the more startling.

The story opens on a frozen, desolate Valentine's Day, as straightforward Joel (Jim Carrey) and wild-heart Clementine (Kate Winslet) meet on a train to Montauk and engage in the strangest railroad-located Meet-Cute since the one between Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh in "The Manchurian Candidate". They spend a blissful day and night together and all appears to be going well between them. After about a reel of this, the film cuts to a time after the bitter end of their romance when Joel runs into Clementine in a bookstore and she doesn't seem to recognize him at all. He soon discovers that Clementine has undergone a radical new medical process where painful memories of a specific subject can be completely removed so it is as if they never happened. Upset at being erased like that, Joel visits the doctor (Tom Wilkinson) and impulsively decides to have all of his memories of Clementine removed as well. His consultation with the doctor leads to the funniest bit of applied logic I've seen in a film since the amnesiac lesbian in "Mulholland Drive" was asked if she had ever done anything like that before: "Will this procedure cause any brain damage?" "Technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage."

The procedure (staged in an appealingly low-tech manner) begins with the most recent memories and goes through the ugly breakup in detail. The problem arises when the memories go further back and Joel begins to recollect exactly what made him love Clementine in the first place. Now that he remembers, he suddenly decides that he doesn't want to part with the memory of her after all but he is unable to halt the procedure. Instead, he tries to hide his thoughts of her in different parts of his memory that the procedure might not think to look in-before long, he has worked Clementine into old thoughts in which she poses as his mom or bears witness to any number of long-repressed traumas. Before long, the removal team (Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood and Kirsten Dunst) begins to catch on and track Joel and Clementine through the increasingly collapsing recesses of his mind. To complicate matters further, one of the team (Wood) has fallen for Clementine himself and is using the notes of how Joel wooed her in the first place for his own needs.

See what I mean about being an utterly realistic story at its center? Who among us hasn't gone through some sort of romantic conflict that we wouldn't want to erase from our subconscious? However appealing the notion of getting rid of them might be, I would be willing to guess that many of us would respond in much the same way that Joel does in the film-by realizing that, in most cases, the good memories are worth putting up with the bad ones. This is the secret to what makes Kaufman's work so unique and interesting; he takes completely recognizable feelings and emotions (such as the desire to be someone else) and comes up with a brilliantly symbolic way of exploring those notions (such as popping up in the mind of certain Steppenwolf Theatre members or claiming to be a CIA assassin).

Of course, in the hands of a less-confident filmmaker, the surreal aspects of the screenplay might have overwhelmed the more realistic ideas. Although director Michel Gondry (who previously teamed up with Kaufman for the underrated "Human Nature") comes from the world of music videos (including works by Bjork and the White Stripes), he doesn't let the visual aspects of the story take over the film. For example, there is no obvious differentiation at first between the real world of Joel and Clementine and the world of their memories; this is a smart move because it not only suggests how strong and palpable those memories still are, but when the film does throw in bits of visual astonishment, they have far more impact than they would if the film had been packed with them. (There is a scene of a quietly disintegrating memory of a bookstore meeting-with the title gradually disappearing from the covers-that is absolutely haunting.)

Adding to the power of the film are the two central performances by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. With the exception of his astounding mimicry in "Man on the Moon", this is by far the most compelling and fully-formed work that Carrey has ever done on film-completely free of both the ham-fisted mugging that he tends to indulge in with many of his comedies and the even-more ham-fisted "I am an Actor!" performances that he tends to give in films like "The Majestic". Here, he has the ordinary-guy-in-extraordinary-situation role down perfectly; he never tries to play up to the weirdness around him but instead serves as the calm center to the chaos around him. Winslet, in fact, gets to play the nuttier of the two roles and it is the best work that she has turned in since "Heavenly Creatures"; her Clementine is impulsive, quirky, annoying, maddening, sometimes downright hateful and yet, much like Joel, she finds an approach to the character that somehow makes her still lovable despite all of her flaws.

I have to admit a personal fondness for "Adaptation" (as I can sadly relate to any film involving writer's block) but I think that "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is by far the most emotionally satisfying film based on one of Kaufman's scripts. It is formally intriguing (especially the sneaky way that the story doubles back on itself) but it is also touching in a way that is utterly unexpected and it also contains some of the biggest laughs in recent memory as well. Before this year ends, I will probably see between 200-300 movies; I suspect that this will be one of the few that I will be able to remember even a year from now.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.