Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: A Review

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND

I think most if not all of us have had that one love whom we still pine for despite the hurt they caused us. That makes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind relatable despite its whacked-out premise and style. Well-acted, directed and written, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind will reward those who watch the film.

It is Valentine's Day, 2004. This, however, is not a joyful day for Joel Barish (Jim Carrey). It is a dark, satanic holiday, as he has no love of his own. Almost on a whim, he opts not to go to work but to take a different train. Here, he meets the very quirky Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet). She seems a bit of a manic pixie dream girl. She is also assertive and aggressive. However, they seem to find themselves drawn to each other. 

There is a fly in the ointment to this budding romance. That would be Patrick (Elijah Wood), the man puzzled to find Joel waiting outside Clementine's apartment. Patrick appears to be Clementine's real boyfriend. However, not everything is as it seems. Joel finds that he and Clementine were involved in the recent past. She has opted to remove him from her memory. Now, Joel has opted to do the same. For that, he turns to the same company that Clementine used: Lacuna, Incorporated.

Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) appears to be a benevolent figure. He needs all of Joel's memories of Clementine to start the removal process. That process will require that Lacuna's operatives go to Joel's apartment at night to remove all those memories. One of the operatives, Stan (Mark Ruffalo) is seeing Dr. Mierzwiak's loyal secretary Mary (Kirsten Dunst). She comes during the procedure for some drinking, drugging and schtupping. Stan's right-hand man seems more interested in keeping his new girlfriend, whom he nicknames "Tangerine" from going off the deep end.

That right-hand man? Patrick. That new girlfriend? Clementine.

While Joel knows that Clementine had her memories of him removed, he is unaware that Patrick has been using them to get his own hands on our manic pixie dream girl. Joel also has a change of heart and wants to keep his memories. That requires a few mind tricks of his own, which the whacked-out Stan cannot figure out how to counter. This will require the personal intervention of Dr. Mierzwiak, who has a few secrets of his own. Will Mary be the key in getting our lovebirds together? Will Joel and Clementine find a tabula rasa for their bad romance? 

The title Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind comes from a line from the Alexander Pope poem Eloisa to Abelard. Mary, who carries a torch for Dr. Mierzwiak, quotes it to him in an effort to impress her potentially unrequited love. In her efforts to impress, she mistakenly refers to the author as "Pope Alexander", with Dr. Mierzwiak gently correcting her. I mention this because the title Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind now carries what I think was Pope's idea of the beauty of not remembering. It would, perhaps, be bliss. However, it would not be life. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind makes the case that love is not all rainbows and lollipops. It is enduring heartache. It is sadness. True love, however, is in going past that to find what it is about the other that both drew us to them and holds us to them. 

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is wildly inventive thanks to director Michel Gondry and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (with story credit by Gondry, Kaufman and Pierre Bismuth). The film carries a logic to its eccentric story. It trusts the audience to keep up, adding bits of details that will, in the end, make sense. It also carries humor outside the somewhat melancholy love story. That is provided by Stan and Mary. These two, in the throes of a clandestine affair, are delightful oblivious to Joel's plight as he internally rebels against his memory erasure.

The film also has exceptional performances all around. I admit that I am not a Kate Winslet fan. However, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an extremely strong performance from her. Clementine initially appears to be that manic pixie dream girl, quirky and whacky and flighty. However, as the film goes on, we see her as aggressive and assertive. She is not there to fix Joel's problems. She sometimes causes them. Clementine is a fascinating character, one who operates on her own logic yet is vulnerable and searching for love.

Jim Carrey too excels as Joel. This is a change of pace for the manic comic. He is morose and heartbroken. He also, though, carries a curious hope that despite the travails of love, Joel can still find someone. It is a bit of a surprise that while Winslet was singled out for Oscar consideration, Carrey was not. He was a major component of what made Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind successful. Joel was a bit of an everyman. He was a bit down on himself. He was hurt and wounded by love. Despite that, he was still something of a romantic. It was as good a performance as Kate Winslet's. 

The rest of the cast was equally strong. Elijah Wood's Patrick, I would argue, technically committed medical malpractice by using Joel's files to use on Clementine. However, his bumbling was amusing. Mark Ruffalo and Kirsten Dunst played well against each other. Dunst in particular had a wonderful arc, shifting from efficient and somewhat dismissive of patients to a de facto whistleblower. Tom Wilkinson made the bad doctor's fake sincerity amusing and droll. 

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind has some arresting visual sequences and an effective Jon Brion score. All the elements blended well in making this bizarre love story surprisingly relatable. 

"Memories may be beautiful and yet, what's too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget. So it's the laughter, we will remember, whenever we remember The Way We Were". Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind did not quote directly from The Way We Were. However, the lyrics to the Barbra Streisand song sum up what Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is about. Memories of love, too painful to remember, can be forgotten if one thinks that the love is worth it. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an eccentric love story. Then again, so many love stories are eccentric to begin with. 

DECISION: B+