May 3, 2004 -- Charlie Kaufman (“Adaptation”) is in a class by himself as a screenwriter and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is another fine example of his fevered imagination. The film also benefits from a stellar cast. This is one of the best films of the year. The story represents a progression towards a more abastract depiction of themes visited earlier by Kaufman in the films “Being John Malkovich” and “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.” In his earlier films, Kaufman explored the workings of the human mind in a more literal way. This film presents similar ideas, but uses imagery similar to dreams or hallucinations to illustrate the workings of the mind.

Jim Carrey (“Bruce Almighty”) stars as Joel Barish, a shy man who is drawn into a relationship with the erratic Clementine Kruczynski (played by Kate Winslet of “Iris”). When the affair ends badly, Joel seeks out the services of a memory-erasing service offered by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson of “In the Bedroom”). Joel discovers, halfway through his memory-erasing session, that he doesn't want to lose his memories of Clementine. There are a lot of good memories being lost, as well as the bad ones. Unable to awaken from the memory-erasing process, he tries some unique mind tricks to save some memories. Meanwhile even stranger things are going on with the memory-erasure technicians, Patrick (Elijah Wood of “Lord of the Rings”) and Stan (Mark Ruffalo of “In the Cut”) as well as Dr. Mierzwiak's secretary, Mary (Kirsten Dunst of “Spider-Man”), also become unexpectedly involved in this complex story.

What emerges is a fascinating story about love and how our memories define us. The story leads us to the conclusion that losing painful memories is not as liberating as one might think. It also argues that those who lose their memories are doomed to repeat their mistakes. At the same time, it argues that repeating past mistakes might not be a such a bad thing after all. The story also visits a familiar theme in romantic comedy stories: that even people who don't believe in love still desperately want to believe in it against all evidence to the contrary. The film achieves coherence despite a non-chronological structure and numerous flashbacks. It gets hard to tell what is an event in present time and what is a memory. Eventually, all becomes clear, but the viewer needs some patience to plow through a large volume of memories before getting to the bottom of the story. It is a fascinating cinematic depiction of the how the mind works.

Carrey does a great job of portraying the frustrated and perplexed Barish. Winslet is very effective as the manic-depressive Clementine. Wilkinson, Wood, Dunst and Ruffalo all provide strong supporting performances of characters who are all frustrated by love and memories in various ways. Director Michel Gondry, who also co-wrote the story does a nice job with this film, as does editor Valdís Óskarsdóttir, whose previous experience with Dogme experimental filmmaking techniques stands him in good stead here. Some visual tricks are used in the film to show how memories disappear. People vanish from some scenes. In others, sets are physically deconstructed, or sets merge with other sets as memories mix and merge. The visual imagery is very inventive at times. For the most part, these gimmicks work better than one might expect them to. This is a very ambitious film, one that pushes the narrative to the point of incomprehensibility at times, but it works. If you are looking for something different than the usual Hollywood romantic comedy, this should fit the bill. This film rates a B+.

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Copyright © 2004 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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