Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind Review

Overall Rating

Dazzlingly original, featuring Jim Carrey's finest, most nuanced performance to date.

Might lose you if your taste in movies never strays from the mainstream.

That screenwriter Charlie Kaufman could come up with such an entertaining, out-there premise is hardly a surprise, given his deliciously head-scratching scripts for BEING JOHN MALKONICH and ADAPTATION. What does surprise is how touching his writing can be. Quick synopsis: the heartbroken working-stiff Joel (Jim Carrey) is shocked and hurt to find out that his ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has had all memories of him erased by a revolutionary new medical procedure provided by Lacuna Inc.; out of anger and despair, he enlists for the same procedure. As Lacuna's technicians begin to wipe out his memories of Clementine, starting with the most recent ones and working backwards, Joel gets to re-experience their entire relationship in the course of one night, starting with the more painful episodes and then the happier times they shared together. In doing so, he begins to appreciate the role she played in his life and then battles to save what recollections he has left, a battle that takes place within the confines of his own mind. Trippy, huh?

Sure, the plot may be a bit hard to swallow for the unimaginative, but the questions that it forces the audience to ask of itself are universal. Who hasn't had some kind of relationship go sour and fall apart, leaving you to wonder whether you'd have been better off never meeting that person? Who hasn't suffered the grief of losing a loved one and wanted to forget that individual completely, if only to make the crippling pain go away? Lacuna Inc. offers a more permanent solution to the problem, but its services are no less a crutch than alcohol or drugs (or in my case, tubes of Pillsbury cookie dough) as a means of escaping reality.

Major kudos go to French director Michel Gondry for keeping the more complex elements of the plot digestible for the audience while creating a vivid dreamscape for Joel to wage his battle. The story lends itself easily to eye-popping visual effects, which the film delivers flawlessly (Gondry's background in producing ground-breaking TV commercials back home has no doubt helped him here). More importantly, he never lets the more fanciful aspects of the script distract us from the genuine feelings on display. Jim Carrey has proven himself to be a worthy dramatic actor in selected roles, but he outdoes himself here. At least while he's outside his own brain (I swear, that sentence will make more sense when you see the movie), he plays Joel completely straight; no funny faces, jerky body movements or talking out of his backside, ACE VENTURA-style. Carrey effortlessly taps into his character's wounded heart and brings him to life with a subtlety that couldn't have been predicted from his previous performances. Oddly enough, it falls on the superb Kate Winslet to play the kookier, off-the-wall role in this piece, and she pulls it off with flying colors. She nails Clementine's wild side but also brings maturity to a character that would otherwise seem flighty and irrational; where Joel is mostly passive and complacent during the relationship, it's Clementine who both initiates their courtship and eventually ends their union when she recognizes that they've drifted apart. Carrey and Winslet are aided by a stellar supporting cast that includes Tom Wilkinson, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood, whose characters have issues of their own to deal with.

Wildly imaginative and deeply heartfelt, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is truly unforgettable.