Posted: 03/24/2004

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

(2004)

by D. Patrick Seitz

Written by Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation”) and directed by Michel Gondry (“Human Behavior”), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a must-see love story that appeals to both heart and head.

How often have you wanted to forget all about your most recent ex? Just wake up one morning and have no recollection of them? You’d be able to move forward with your life, right? No regrets? As two star-crossed lovers come to discover in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, such a scenario makes it far too easy to toss out the baby with the bathwater.

Having learned that his ex-girlfriend Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) has gone to Lacuna, Inc. and had all memory of him expunged from her brain, Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) decides in a moment of pique to have her erased from his brain as well. During the erasure process, the unconscious Joel is paraded with memories of their relationship and…pardon the pun…changes his mind. From that point on, it’s up to Joel to try and fritter away his notion of Clementine within unrelated memories of his where the Lacuna techies wouldn’t think to look for her.

That description of the plot doesn’t really do it justice, but it’s all one can divulge without giving away spoilers or losing the unwinnable fight of trying to adequately describe the film’s fractured chronology.

With Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Jim Carrey pulls off what should have happened many films and many, many millions of dollars ago: he lets his character…and not his real self…take precedence. There is a point late in the film where the scene almost calls for him to revert to his usual schtick, as Joel relives a memory from the age of four, but Carrey exercises what must have been Herculean restraint.

Kate Winslet had no easy task with Clementine, either. In her, Winslet delivers a character whose chaotic, inconsistent behavior doesn’t obscure the real person underneath…the person with whom Joel so effortlessly fell in love, and the person for whom he’s willing to go on the lam within his own memories.

These aren’t perfect people…far from it, in fact. Clementine stumbles from bi-polar extreme to bi-polar extreme in a way that makes you question how she’s managed to survive. Similarly, the hang-dog Joel sneaks his way through life so unobtrusively that it’s a wonder his heart hasn’t stopped beating from sheer ennui and self-apology. However, for all their myriad faults, Clementine and Joel compliment each other in such a way that, together, each of them is happy (if not normal).

Elijah Wood has chosen his first post-LOTR role wisely with the smarmy Patrick, a Lacuna techie whose own fragile sense of self-worth would be endearing were it not for the unethical way in which he looks to address it. Mark Ruffalo’s Lacuna techie Stan exists on the better side of the same coin, although following the rules and being a nice guy don’t reap him the rewards that a more on-the-nose script would toss his way. Kiersten Dunst’s all-purpose receptionist, Mary, doesn’t have much to do until the film is mostly over, but her final few scenes infuse what could have been a superficial character with a pleasing sense of three-dimensionality. Tom Wilkinson could have easily turned in a cold, analytical performance as Lacuna founder Dr. Mierzwiak, but he plays him as a man who seems to have pioneered a very scientific procedure for very compassionate reasons.

This is a very clever film, with no lack of CGI and plot twists, but what makes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind so refreshing is that Michel Gondry puts the techno-glitter and seeds of inevitable film school arguments in their place…serving the story’s emotional core, instead of trying to steal the spotlight for themselves. The stakes are high; Joel is already dead to Clementine, and if the Lacuna techies succeed in wiping his mind clear of her, they’ll be irrevocably severed from one another.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a great film for anyone who rejects the notion that love is nothing more than the sum total of mating instincts and social convention, and that memory is nothing more than synapses firing when they should. When you peel away all the considerable cleverness, Kaufman’s script is a celebration of love as a permanent, known quantity in a world that modern science has reduced to a parade of manipulated variables.

D. Patrick Seitz is an MFA screenwriting student at UC Riverside. He has already called dibs on eating Kaufman’s brains to absorb his skill.

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