Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Review
by Richard A. Zwelling (razwee AT yahoo DOT com)April 12th, 2004
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
** 1/2 (out of ****)
a film review by
Richard A. Zwelling
The mad man of meta has returned. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who delved into the twisted world of self-reference in Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, has created a sporadically poignant love story which defies standard chronology and twists back on itself in unexpected fashion.
This is the sort of thing we've come to expect from Kaufman. What I have also come to expect is a host of intriguing intellectual ideas that fizzle on screen and draw excessive attention to themselves. Adaptation was a film I found to be too clever for its own good. The ideas were stimulating, but did not translate to emotionally engaging cinema.
This is, unfortunately, the same case here. The protagonist, Joel Barish (Jim Carrey), is a non-descript, timid man who shares a love affair with the impulsive Clementine (Kate Winslet). In Clementine, Joel finds a way out of his mundane shell, while Clementine falls for Joel's sincerity and awkwardness.
Eventually, however, things sour, and Clementine enlists the aid of Dr. Howard Mierzqwiak (Tom Wilkinson) in erasing Joel from her memory (does this not sound so Charlie Kaufman already?).
Joel is grief-stricken by this, and eventually, he decides that the best thing would be to undergo memory erasure himself. When undergoing the process, however, Joel actively resists and discovers that Clementine has left an indelible mark on his soul.
As with the other two Kaufman scripts mentioned, this is a fascinating idea that hooked me. In Being John Malkovich fashion, we submerge into Joel's inner consciousness. The resulting visual representations have a disquieting, surreal quality that tantalizes the eye.
And like the other two scripts, I often felt as if the oddities were there for their own sake, and not to undergird the story. While there are undeniably forceful moments that tug at the heart, too often I felt the film meander into meaningless attempts at novelty and cleverness.
The set designs, costumes, makeup, and special effects are impressive and imaginative in their own right, but too often I found myself saying, "Yeah, but…to what end?"
The bright side is that Jim Carrey gives arguably the best performance of his career (I liked him more in The Truman Show, but several have chosen his work here). He is wonderfully restrained and paints Joel as an irresistibly sympathetic character. Carrey is known for using his versatile, elastic array of facial expressions for low-key comedy. Here, he effectively uses that array for dramatic impact.
Meanwhile, Kate Winslet leaps off the screen as the effusive, seductive Clementine. This is, in my opinion, the best performance of her career. While the words that Joel and Clementine speak to each other are important, so much of what makes the love story poignant lies between the words, and the two leads create a powerful, non-verbal bond.
There are a host of other big names, among them Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, and Elijah Wood, but they are all wasted in roles that demand little of them. Their characters are skimmed over, and we never get as deeply into their lives as I had hoped we would.
This is an intriguing film, but the effective moments are intermittent. If Kaufman had focused more on character and theme, and not developed a fetish for tangential idiosyncrasies, the film might have been superb. David Lynch is good example of a director who, at his best, uses off-center visuals as a method of enhancing his characters and themes. The key to Lynch's success, however, is that the peculiarities blend with the cinematic experience, whereas Kaufman's antics call blatant attention to themselves.
As is, Eternal Sunshine remains a vast well of potential untapped and unrealized.
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