Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

a film directed by Michael Gondry

review written by jack floobles

January 13, 2010

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, directed by Michael Gondry and written by Charlie Kaufman, is one of the best movies of the last decade. It's difficult to think of a movie I've seen in the last ten years that doesn't have more charm to it. The movie never misses a moment. It never wastes a scene or even a single line of dialog.

The film follows Joel Barish (played by Jim Carrey) and hipster, free-wheelin' Clementine Kruczynski (played by Kate Winslet). This is Jim Carrey's best role to date. When I saw this in the theater, people stood up and walked out. I heard one person exclaim, "this isn't even funny!" Well, no, it's not laugh-out-loud funny. It has a few funny moments, but that's not the point. This movie, more than any other, displays Carrey's talent as an actor. He isn't just a funny man. He has real depth. This puts him on par with some of the great actors of the last 20 years. Kate Winslet, as always, performs great. It's not a big surprise, though it's fun to see her in a very different role for herself. She's punk; she dyes her hair orange, blue, whatever. She has a lot of attitude. She's spoiled, bratty, angry, bitter, and she takes all of her angst out on poor Joel. For both actors, it would seem they're out of their element, and yet both actors pull of their roles perfectly.

At the start of the movie, we meet the two characters on a train to Montauk. Joel never meant to take the train initially, but something inside him compels him to skip work and take the train. He meets Clementine aboard the train. Joel is awkward, quiet, shy. He doesn't know how to talk to women. He doesn't know how to act around them. Clementine is his shining opposite. She has no problem approaching Joel, talking to him, striking up a conversation with him despite his tentativeness. At face value, they would seem like a terrible couple. The story picks up with Joel in tears, frustrated, out of control. He's packing up his bags, taking everything with him to pay a visit to Lacuna Inc., a uniquely interesting company whose practice it is to wipe your memory clean of the bad things you'd like to forget.

In Joel's case, he'd like to forget everything about Clementine. And why? Because he has just discovered that, on a whim, Clementine went and had her memory erased of Joel.

It's during the process of erasing Joel's memory that the movie's brilliance truly shines. Flashing back into Joel's memory, seeing how he fell in love with Clementine. Seeing all their moments together. Watching them go from coming apart as a couple to coming together as lovers is an amazing experience. It's full of sweetness. It's pure. It's simple. It's joy. And I watched every minute of it, soaking it up, on the edge of my seat.

The movie has a lot of turns. And the plot isn't linear. You can get lost, not quite sure where you are in the story, but it seems fitting, symbolic of how one gets lost in a relationship that started out so well and ends up so poorly.

Joel Barish and Clementine Kruczynski are a great movie couple. You fall in love with them, as they fall in love and then out of love and then in love again with one another.

the following actors/directors were tagged in this review: