#78 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as Joel and Clementine, in the great love poem "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".

REVIEW:

A sweet, beautiful, heartbreaking film...quite possibly one of my favourite films about relationships and romance (it's only slightly less romantic than the Before Sunrise/Before Sunset doublebill in my eyes). Charlie Kaufman for the first time used his brilliant talent for creating mindbending screenplays to craft a truly touching examination of how we compartmentalize things in our mind, and although Eternal Sunshine is more bittersweet than the more outright comedies Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, it is infinitely more tonally consistent than Kaufman's previous two projects. Director Michel Gondry frequently lets the images on screen blur in and out of focus, which is a perfect expression of the fogginess, yet persistent clarity, of our most treasured memories. This is one of the first films I have seen that really understands the mechanics of memory: it doesn't give us Hallmark moments from the doomed relationship of Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet), but rather the fleeting, minor details that so often help to fill in a memory. Carrey and Winslet have never been better: they are character types (he a mild-mannered introvert, she a spontaneous extrovert) that we know are doomed in a long-term relationship, but we can fully understand their attraction to one another. The film's narrative twists and turns don't leave us fatigued because the subplots are all so fascinating and comic: Elijah Wood's creepy exploitation of his knowledge to attempt to woo Winslet; Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dunst and Tom Wilkinson as the other memory technicians, navigating both difficulties in their high-tech prowess and their own romantic entanglements; and David Cross and Jane Adams as a constantly bickering couple. For all the joys of the peripheral characters, though, the heart of the film is the Carrey/Winslet relationship, and essentially Eternal Sunshine boils down to a beautifully-rendered, comic and wonderfully inventive demonstration of the axiom that "it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."


MY RATING:

80/100

WOULD IT BE IN MY TOP 250?

Yes.

WHY IS IT IN THE IMDB'S TOP 250?

With its humour, inventiveness and bittersweet romance, Eternal Sunshine has an enduring appeal to anyone who has ever loved. It is no wonder that it persistently ranks high on the IMDB's top 250 poll. Kaufman's multilayered writing style at last found a subject profound enough to support his narrative experimentation, and audiences have continued to uncover the strengths of this wonderful film in the nine years since its release.