Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (8/10)

Complicated doesn’t begin to describe this script by Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation). One morning shy Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) decides not to go to work and instead hops on a train to Montauk, a seaside retreat on the eastern tip of Long Island, where he walks along the beach. On the way back he meets extroverted Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), who more or less picks him up on the train and they begin a relationship. Then she decides she doesn’t want to continue so goes to a sort of clinic, run by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), where a person’s brain may be erased of specific memories, to erase Joel.

Joel learns of this and goes to the clinic. He is so upset he applies to have his brain erased of Clementine. The idea is that he brings all the things he has that pertain to her and then they come to his apartment, put a big electronic thing connected to a computer over his head and he goes to sleep while they electronically erase everything pertaining to her from his brain overnight. When he awakens in the morning, she should be not even a memory.

But during the night, while he’s asleep, he changes his mind. This is where it gets complicated. Not only are the technicians performing the purge, Mary (Kirsten Dunst), Stan (Mark Ruffalo), and Patrick (Elijah Wood), distracted by romance, as we journey through Joel’s brain, we find we are involved in time warps and other mental shenanigans as Joel fights against the process while he’s asleep. It’s love against technology; which will conquer?

In addition to things not being what they appear, relationships are not as we assume. Even the opening sequence doesn’t seem to be what we thought it was. Maybe this isn’t for everyone, but it’s so well written, directed (Michel Gondry), and acted that I found it beguiling, thought provoking entertainment.

March 10, 2004

The End

top