Film Of The Week #18 - Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Since this is probably my favourtiest movie ever, and since it's my first nomination to get chosen for fotw (:) ) I'm going to write a lenghty one.

Being John Malckovich, Adaptation, and Human Nature are all excellent films. They really were stunningly original, hilarious pieces of work. The Spike Jonze / Charlie Kaufman combo (which produced BJM and Adaptation) were the films that were always given the focus of the attention. They were quirky, original pieces that lacked emotional punch - and this didn't really matter. Michel Gondry (Human Nature and ETSOTSM) had always said that he was waiting for Kaufman to give him the grade A script. ESOTSM was it.

The story is as high concept as the previous films - Joel (Jim Carrey) decides to have the memories of ex-girlfried Clementine (Kate Winslet, ever changing hair colour and all) erased after she does the same. However, once the deletion begins, he regrets his decision and tries to fight back. This is, however, an extremely complicated narrative (as I found out when studying this film for a college project recently) with all kinds of subplots and the like, so I'm not going to get into it any more.

First - I must praise the genius of Gondry. He is by far the most exciting director working at the moment IMO. This film is superbly well put together - reality and memories are constantly being blurred together. This is a difficult thing to achieve effectively, but Gondry never breaks the diegesis of the world. Memories distort (see: the falling car, faceless characters) as they are deleted, and Gondry achieves this through refreshingly traditional special effects - there are only sparce amounts of CGI used here.

The cast are uniformily excellent. Kate Winslet - as always - is the standout. She is the most likable kook since Annie Hall. Jim Carrey proves his acting worth after the Truman show, with a very minimalist, mumbling performance. The chemistry between these two characters - the extrovert and introvert - is powerful, and like all good romances you really want these two to get back together, despite the setbacks their relationship has clearly suffered. The supporting players - Mark Ruffallo, spectacularly creepy Elijah Wood, quirky Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson - all do their darndest with limited but important roles.

But the most impressive part of this film is the way typical genre and narrative constraints are turned on their heads. The narrative structure is completely skew-ways. 20 minutes in, we jump without warning to a completely different sequence of events. The main memory deletion story plays out in reverse order (i.e. Joel and Clementine's break up is the first memory to be erased, and then their relationship plays out in reverse, while Joel actively participates in them). And this main plot is constantly interrupted with 'real-world' interludes which focus on the employees deleting the memories. I'll be honest and say it is a difficult structure to follow, but come the end, as everything has fallen into place, you really be thouroughly impressed at how well Gondry and Kaufman have handled the story. Everything makes a wonderful kind of sense. This is romance, but not as you know it.

While the previous Kaufman scripts were borderline masterpieces, by adding true emotion to this film, this crosses that border effortlessly. The only film that has come close to reaching the dizzying standard left by Eternal Sunshine is Gondry's fourth film, the absurdly under-viewed 'The Science of Sleep'. Taken as a duo, these two films are probably my two favourite of the decade so far. But Eternal Sunshine came first, and provides one of the finest - if not the finest - cinematic experience I have had to pleasure to sit through.

That said, I can see where anyone who says this is a crock of steaming s**t is coming from.