Movie Review:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

    It must be very hard for marketing departments to know what to do with Charlie Kaufman's films, and understandably so.  The man's work cannot easily be hemmed in to a single category, and films tend to be marketed on the strength of a single genre (which frequently kills multigeneric films).  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for example, is being marketed as a romantic comedy, an advertising half-truth that hampers films that feature both romance and comedy but rarely have the two intersect.

    The less said about the plot, the better, but it's hard to talk about the movie without talking about the plot on some level.  Basically, Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) break up.  Clementine, on a whim, visits Lacuna, a company that specializes in erasing memories from a person's brain.  Finding out what happened, Joel rushes to Lacuna and insists upon having the procedure done to him as well, but as it is being done (with much of the movie taking place inside Joel's brain) he has second thoughts and attempts to preserve memories of Clementine as the technicians attempt to erase them.

    Though Kaufman's concept is, unsurprisingly, an interesting one, it's not the best part of the movie.  Adaptation and Malkovich certainly had solid emotional cores, but people describing what they found so interesting about the films generally came back to their high-concept origins.  Not so with Sunshine, which uses its concept to get the ball rolling and then dives headlong into Kaufman's most emotional waters yet, as Joel realizes that he doesn't want to lose his memories of Clementine and spends most of the rest of the film examining their relationship with a version of her in his imagination.

    Running parallel to this story is the darker side of Sunshine, depicting Lacuna technicians (Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson) who smoke weed, drink, and have sex, all in the comforts of Joel's home as they perform the procedure on him.  Kaufman obviously frowns on the procedure, as his main character attempts to resist it while those performing it suffer from a distinct lack of morals.  People should not try to hide from their past.

    This section makes the section inside Joel's head, as he relives his memories of Clementine while they are being picked off one-by-one, look tremendously emotional in comparison, not that it wouldn't be if those scenes didn't exist.  Despite the frequent fights toward the end of their relationship, Joel and Clementine have an obvious rapport - credit Carrey and Winslet here especially, as they really make you feel like these are two people who belong together, and who know each other intimately.  Yet they fight because their connection is so ingrained that each has a hard time expressing it to the other, and both feel like there is something wrong with that.  It is a paradox of their love.

    What is perhaps the best part about the film is how realistic it feels.  People fight in relationships, sometimes for no reason at all, as Joel and Clementine are depicted doing.  At other times they are blissfully happy, in spite of the reservations they might have about each other at different moments.  Observed on film it can feel perhaps a bit schizophrenic, but relationships can be like that.  Kaufman approaches Joel and Clementine from the right angle, and Carrey and Winslet play them to perfection.

    I haven't said too much about the rest of the film, but I don't think I really need to.  Michel Gondry's direction is not intrusive, which is about the highest compliment that can be paid a former music video director, especially in a film this emotional - he does make the erasures in Joel's mind look particularly cool, though.   The Lacuna employees' story is interesting at times and makes the end of the film play out differently than it would have otherwise, but its dark streak, while very prevalent, ends up being scrubbed away by Joel and Clementine, who are seemingly fated to end up together, no matter how they try to get rid of each other.

    At the end of Adaptation, Kaufman's character decides to proclaim his love for a woman he is friends with, after having blown his chance earlier in the movie by being too hesitant.  Having let his twin brother Donald's sensibilities overwhelm his script, Charlie takes on Donald's personality as well, subscribing to his theory of "You are what you love, not what loves you," and drives away happy.   However, this all comes as part of an ending deliberately created as a play on the cliché endings of Hollywood and how Charlie letting Donald offer ideas on his script has led to this point.

    The irony behind this is that Kaufman suffuses Sunshine with the notion that love conquers all - it can even make it through an attempt at purging it from memory.  While not perfectly happy, the film's end is hopeful, having reunited its lead characters as they realize that, despite their past complaints about each other, they have such a connection that they should try again.

    It's not the kind of work we might expect from the man behind Being John Malkovich, with its black humor and bizarre take on relationships, but Eternal Sunshine is a movie for anyone who's ever been in love.  If you're in love right now, even better for the experience, but it's not required.

    Kaufman depicts it so well that even if you've forgotten what it's like, you'll be glad to remember.  A+

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a Focus Features release.  Rated for language, some drug and sexual content.