Review by © Jane Freebury
If you’re wondering why the words don’t roll off the tongue, the title is a quote from 18th century man of letters Alexander Pope, drawn from a his poem about Eloise and Abelard, two of the world’s most famous lovers. In its twenty-first century way, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is also about the exquisite sorrow of lost love.
It’s another eccentric movie experience from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation) that delves into the persistence of memory when a love affair is over and sweet nostalgia lingers. Mind is the operative word here, just as it was in Kaufman’s screenplay for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and for Being (inside) John Malkovich (‘s mind).
So it’s a very different Jim Carrey here from almost any other film by the comic madcap you care to name, with strong affinities with The Truman Show.
Here as Joel he’s strongly introverted and would rather read or sketch than chat a woman up at the train station, or the beach, or the library, or wherever it was that he and Clementine (Kate Winslet) met. It takes a woman with blue (sometimes red, orange, even grey) hair, the mind of a grasshopper, and a devil-may-care extrovert to break through his defences.
She draws him out of his emotional torpor, lures him into doing crazy things with a frisson of risk so that for a while time spent feels like he’s really living. Too bad it’s all over before the introductory credits begin – but I don’t want to put you off, it’s a jolt that’s one of many surprising and exhilarating moments in this Michel Gondry film.
After Clementine leaves, Joel discovers she’s had her memories of their affair erased so that she can ‘move on’. He decides to submit to treatment too – call it ‘brain damage’ – delivered by the shonky outfit at Lacuna (Tom Wilkinson, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood).
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is effortlessly freewheeling as it dips in and out of Joel’s memory, pausing briefly in the present and then heading back to the past again, just before it disintegrates under the Lacuna cat scan. It’s such a technical achievement that it could leave you impressed but cool, however Carrey and Winslet are really interesting together, and turn out to be a wonderful pair of lovers.
In a capsule: A brilliantly free-wheeling technical exercise from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, that’s actually also a very touching love affair.
4 stars