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Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the kind of film I hate trying to review. Generally I find it much easier to blast away at something that sucks than to praise something that I really like (maybe it's because I'm a glass-half-empty kind of person). And I really, really liked Mind. I could barely move afterwards, and I'm usually running toward the door as soon as the closing credits start rolling. Mind manages to present romantic relationships in an incredibly passionate yet astoundingly pessimistic way, and I think that screwed up my equilibrium, or something.
Don't let the trailers or the fact that you hate Jim Carrey keep you from seeing this movie. Mind is not a comedic romp, as advertised on television (complete with Comedic Romp music). Instead, it's a depressing look at a doomed relationship, with a couple of laughs thrown in just so you won't think about taking a header off of the balcony during the second act. And Mind is a really difficult film, too. If you were thrown by the opening of 21 Grams, Mind may permanently fuck your shit up.
Okay, here's the story - and it's really difficult to explain without giving away some of the film's secrets: Quiet introvert Joel Barish (Carrey, Bruce Almighty) meets and falls for fellow Long Islander Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet, The Life of David Gale), a flighty Barnes & Noble clerk with blue hair and a motormouth who describes herself as "high maintenance." The relationship goes sour and Clementine undergoes an experimental procedure that erases all Joel memories from her brain. Joel finds out and, because he can't bear what Clem has done, decides to have the same memory wipe performed on himself.
Halfway through the procedure, however, Joel changes his mind. Since he can't put a stop to it in his unconscious state, he starts to squirrel away his reminiscences of Clem into parts of his memory where she doesn't belong. Mind also offers a couple of subplots involving the technicians who are performing the procedure on Joel, who can hear everything they say like some kind of surreal dream narrators (they're played by Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dunst and Tom Wilkinson).
You may not have heard of Gondry, but you're probably familiar with Mind's screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman. Kaufman has, with just five produced scripts under his belt, become the greatest, most creative writer in the history of filmmaking. It frightens me when I say Mind is a stronger effort than Kaufman's Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind or Gondry's own Human Nature (okay, the Confessions part isn't that scary). Mind is certainly the most real and most human screenplay he's produced, and that makes it all the more devastating to watch. Kaufman continues his knack for presenting absolutely insane ideas and situations that are embraced by his characters in matter-of-fact ways that just makes you want to scream. 7½ floor? Okay. Erase my memories of one person with a couple of laptops and a funny hat? Sure, c'mon in. It's completely unthinkable to imagine this guy writing for television sitcoms, which he was doing in the early and mid '90s.
I've yet to find anyone besides myself who saw Gondry's Human Nature, so if you know his work it must be via his inventive music videos, which offer technical wizardry that is often overlooked because of the shockingly original concepts he creates (get his Director's Series DVD, which has a bunch of the videos as well as a funny Jim Carrey short called Pecan Pie). Here, Gondry creates an entire world in Joel's head, with sets crumbling away, collapsing on themselves, or bleeding into one another as his memories are destroyed. The level of his manipulation will, I think, be much more evident with a second and third viewing, which I await with great pleasure.
Gondry makes these 108 minutes fly by, giving us a brief prologue and coda - each featuring Beck's "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime - surrounding the satisfying meat in Mind's middle. It helps that he's surrounded himself with great off-camera talent, too. Expect another terrific score from Jon Brion (Punch Drunk Love - the previous reigning champ of edgy romance starring comedy giants) and dizzying handheld photography from Spike Lee regular Ellen Kuras (Personal Velocity). Valdís Óskarsdóttir, a veteran of three Dogme films, does an amazing job with Mind's difficult editing.
In terms of acting, Carrey has never been better. This dialed-back performance is not unlike Adam Sandler's in Love, but it's so much deeper and affecting. Winslet is, as always, very good, but seems to be channeling too much Rachel Weisz. The supporting cast, which also includes David Cross and Jane Adams, does well with perfectly developed roles that are substantial without being distracting.
Mind, whose clunky title derives from an Alexander Pope poem, is definitely the strongest 2004 release to date, and I can't understand why it wasn't released during a more Oscar-friendly season. To me, it could have competed with anything from 2003, including Lost in Translation. If you see it and aren't moved to tears whenever you hear the lyrics to the lullaby "Clementine," it's probably time to invest in some defibrillator paddles.
1:48 - R for language, some drug and sexual content
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