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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Widescreen Edition) Customer Reviews (22 - 24 of 42 Reviews)

Some kind of brilliant!
Let's review the roster of mad geniuses involved. I didn't love Adaptation or Being John Malkovich, but they left no doubt that Charlie Kaufman was the most creative and inimitable screenwriter in Hollywood. Michel Gondry has long been a cult favorite for his hip music videos, and though his first feature film Human Nature was very rough around the edges, some of it glittered with promise. For a few years, Jim Carrey was one of the few actors breathing life into movies. Kate Winslet is extremely gifted and brave, and Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson, and Kirsten Dunst are too skilled to be considered character actors. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is what happens when all of these all-stars team up and hit their peaks at the same time.

Kaufman's concept is ingenious: Joel (Jim Carrey) discovers that his former girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has undergone a procedure to have her memories of their tempestuous relationship erased. Wilkinson, Dunst, Wood, and Ruffalo are the staff at Lacuna Inc., the agency offering the service which Wilkinson describes as a type of brain damage "on a par with a night of heavy drinking." Heartbroken himself, Joel decides to undergo the same procedure. But if one has all the painful times erased, what is left but love? Trapped inside his own memories, Joel begins to have second thoughts. Can he salvage some of the happiest memories? And if he can't, will fate still bring the two of them together, or is the idea of a soul mate just a function of chance? This is a thinking person's romantic comedy.

Gondry's visualization matches Kaufman's concept in wacky originality. As memories are wiped, they begin to overlap, and Gondry represents this with set pieces and characters that begin to meld and overlap in ways that will leave you grinning with pleasure. What do our memories look like if shown as a movie? Dali-esque, if Gondry is to be believed, complete with melting faces. The handheld shots and grainy photography lend the movie a dynamic, organic energy. At the same time, the non-linear timeline, one which twists in on itself like a Mobius strip, will leave you puzzling over what exactly is happening, and when, in the same way that movies like Memento did. It's a movie I can't wait to see again so I can catch all the visual clues and revisit the uniformly superb cast.

Not just the best movie of 2004 so far, but one of the best of the past five years. It's the type of tickling entertainment joy we hope to feel every time the lights go down but only experience ever so rarely.

Spotless "Mind
Charlie Kaufman is known for creating films that bend the mind -- "Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation," "Human Nature." But he takes a slightly different turn in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," a sort of romantic dark comedy that raises questions about memory and identity. It may not be the best of Kaufman's work, but it's in some ways the most endearing.

Uptight Joel (Jim Carrey) is shocked to learn that his likably flaky ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has taken unusual measures, post-breakup. She's having her memories of him erased from her brain at Lacuna Inc. When he learns WHY she broke up with him (she thought he was boring), he gets mad and decides to have the same thing done to himself.

So a group of offbeat techies and doctors (Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood and Kirsten Dunst) begin to erase the memories of Clementine from Joel's brain (Wood's character also tries to use Joel's memories to seduce Clementine). Problem is, his brain doesn't want to let them go. It pokes Clementine into parts of his memory where she doesn't belong, so he won't have to let go. And viewing the memories makes him fall in love all over again...

"Dark romantic comedy" is the closest thing that "Eternal Sunshine" has to a description. Like Kaufman's other films, it's funny in a subtle way, and more obviously sweet and romantic. Not to mention thought-provoking. If you could erase unpleasant memories, would you do it, if it changed the person you were? If we get rid of the pain, do we also get rid of the joy?

Michel Gondry is best known for his work on Bjork, Radiohead and White Stripes music videos -- deliciously strange ones. Somehow, he fits perfectly into directing "Eternal Sunshine." A trip through a person's brain is a hard thing to manage, but he does it -- surreal little images like a teeny tiny Winslet and Carrey bathing in a kitchen sink, or lying on the ice. It's weird, and it works. At the same time, he can capture more mundane moments well.

Jim Carrey gives what may be his best "serious" role ever, as the conflicted, lovelorn Joel. Kate Winslet's Clementine breaks the mold of "romantic comedy heroine" with her free-spirited wackiness. Together, they make a flawed couple that you really want to see together. And Elijah Wood takes what could have been an empty role and turns Patrick into a rather pitiful, lonely figure, rather than a 2-D creep.

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is not the best from Charlie Kaufman's fertile brain, but this melancholy dark comedy is well worth checking out. A wonderful, prismatic film.

Unpredictable, Dream-like, and Uncanny
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is definitely one of those gems of a movie that makes sense despite its twists and turns. I'm not sure if this is a representation of the continuing wave of independent films with big name stars, such as last year's Lost In Translation, but it certainly was worth watching. It's one of those films that has a natural ambience.

The film does not follow the mundane plotlines as most Romantic comedies. Of course, in the beginning just when you think it's going to be one of those boy meets girl, boy loses girl scenarios, Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine's screenwriter pulls a curve ball. The relationship between Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) appear complicated, and indeed it is. But somehow Kaufman ties it all together in the end. This film is about identity and memory, and coming to terms with the past in order to tie loose ends that exist in the present.

The most uncanny aspect of the film is the appearance of opening credits 15-20 minutes into the movie! The film almost has a 'Magical Mystery Tour' feel -- the beginning starts off predictable, then suddenly half-way through the film you're hit with a warp sense of Joel's memory and experiences, and then the concluding scenes lends itself to an additional plotline somewhat relevant to the relationship between Joel and Clementine, which involves LacUna, the company that erases both Joel and Clementine's memories. Unfortunately, it is the weak portion of the film.

The cinematography was effective in portraying the fast paced parts of the film as well as the overexposed photography -- it gave that indie feel as well as the surreal-like effects. In addition, I found the soundtrack of the film to be quite interesting. At times I thought one of the opening chords or sound effects came from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, or maybe fragments of The Beatles' A Day In A Life. I was disappointed that ELO's Mr. Blue Sky wasn't present in the film, but then again it only appeared in the film's trailer.

Nevertheless, I recommend this film to anyone interested in catching a movie that's fresh and unpredictable.

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