Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND

** 1/2  (out of ****)

a film review by

Richard A. Zwelling

The mad man of meta has returned. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who

delved into the twisted world of self-reference in Being John

Malkovich and Adaptation, has created a sporadically poignant love

story which defies standard chronology and twists back on itself in

unexpected fashion.

This is the sort of thing we've come to expect from Kaufman. What I

have also come to expect is a host of intriguing intellectual ideas

that fizzle on screen and draw excessive attention to themselves.

Adaptation was a film I found to be too clever for its own good. The

ideas were stimulating, but did not translate to emotionally engaging

cinema.

This is, unfortunately, the same case here. The protagonist, Joel

Barish (Jim Carrey), is a non-descript, timid man who shares a love

affair with the impulsive Clementine (Kate Winslet). In Clementine,

Joel finds a way out of his mundane shell, while Clementine falls for

Joel's sincerity and awkwardness.

Eventually, however, things sour, and Clementine enlists the aid of

Dr. Howard Mierzqwiak (Tom Wilkinson) in erasing Joel from her memory

(does this not sound so Charlie Kaufman already?).

Joel is grief-stricken by this, and eventually, he decides that the

best thing would be to undergo memory erasure himself. When

undergoing the process, however, Joel actively resists and discovers

that Clementine has left an indelible mark on his soul.

As with the other two Kaufman scripts mentioned, this is a fascinating

idea that hooked me. In Being John Malkovich fashion, we submerge

into Joel's inner consciousness. The resulting visual representations

have a disquieting, surreal quality that tantalizes the eye.

And like the other two scripts, I often felt as if the oddities were

there for their own sake, and not to undergird the story. While there

are undeniably forceful moments that tug at the heart, too often I

felt the film meander into meaningless attempts at novelty and

cleverness.

The set designs, costumes, makeup, and special effects are impressive

and imaginative in their own right, but too often I found myself

saying, "Yeah, but…to what end?"

The bright side is that Jim Carrey gives arguably the best performance

of his career (I liked him more in The Truman Show, but several have

chosen his work here). He is wonderfully restrained and paints Joel

as an irresistibly sympathetic character. Carrey is known for using

his versatile, elastic array of facial expressions for low-key comedy.

Here, he effectively uses that array for dramatic impact.

Meanwhile, Kate Winslet leaps off the screen as the effusive,

seductive Clementine. This is, in my opinion, the best performance of

her career. While the words that Joel and Clementine speak to each

other are important, so much of what makes the love story poignant

lies between the words, and the two leads create a powerful,

non-verbal bond.

There are a host of other big names, among them Kirsten Dunst, Tom

Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, and Elijah Wood, but they are all wasted in

roles that demand little of them. Their characters are skimmed over,

and we never get as deeply into their lives as I had hoped we would.

This is an intriguing film, but the effective moments are

intermittent. If Kaufman had focused more on character and theme, and

not developed a fetish for tangential idiosyncrasies, the film might

have been superb. David Lynch is good example of a director who, at

his best, uses off-center visuals as a method of enhancing his

characters and themes. The key to Lynch's success, however, is that

the peculiarities blend with the cinematic experience, whereas

Kaufman's antics call blatant attention to themselves.

As is, Eternal Sunshine remains a vast well of potential untapped and

unrealized.

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X-RAMR-ID: 37566
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1271440
X-RT-TitleID: 1130889
X-RT-AuthorID: 7583
X-RT-RatingText: 2.5/4