Movie Review: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine: Torgo approves

As Charlie Kaufman movies go, I was less impressed with "Being John Malkovich" than I was with the concept of "Being John Malkovich." "Adaptation" was ok but not great. "Eternal Sunshine," however, is terrific.

The director, Michel Gondry, also did Dave Chappelle's "Block Party," wherein you get to see Gondry often and get a sense of how he works as a director. That only helped appreciate "Eternal Sunshine," where both Kaufman and Gondry have distinct styles and visions.

Jim Carrey is quite good, though I'd say Kate Winslet is even stronger. Even having just seen her in "Finding Neverland," it was hard to acknowledge she's a British actress more often in period pieces.

I was also happy to learn that Gondry relied heavily on old-fashioned smoke and mirrors tricks over CGI for most of the film.

Roger Ebert mentioned a name for this type of movie, Maze Cinema, wherein the storyline loops back and the timeline is non-linear or at least convoluted. Movies that mess with the viewer's perception of reality seem to be a lasting trend. I think "Usual Suspects" was the first one like this I saw, then "Fight Club," "Memento," and probably anything Charlie Kaufman will ever write.

With this movie, what's so surprising is that despite it being highly conceptual and reliant on visual tricks, it was a powerful emotional center that's easy to feel. By the end, it has fairly punishing things to say about the nature of relationships, but it leaves hope (in ways better than I think it would have with the deleted scenes, which we didn't watch, but I read about --- the 'netflix' deleted scenes problem is that we want to return the movies right after we see them, but nothing spoils a good movie like watching the scenes that didn't work).

One last comment, there's also a clever scene with Jim Carrey playing his character as a 4-year-old, with the use of forced perspective making him look small against his mother. As the parents of a boy who often just wants us to pick him up more than anything in the world, then acts out in frustration if we don't, pulling at things on the fridge like Carrey's character, the scene hit close to home.