Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Charlie Kaufman films are always a challenge, but in sifting through the unusual plot and non-liner zigzags of a narrative you will be rewarded with a level of emotional honesty that is largely unknown in Hollywood. The screenwriter/producer’s movies sit squarely in the “quirky” camp, “Indiewood” fare that is neither a truly independent film nor a mainstream studio picture, but in between the odd and fantasy-based elements is Truth, typically messy truths about what really happens in our heads. He has a way of bringing the essence of the conscious and subconscious mind to the screen, so it makes sense that his films are often confusing and demanding. Although Adaptation is his most personal film (a movie about the writing of the movie you are watching), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the clearest expression of what he does best — exposure of what lies at the heart of love and heartbreak.

The film loops around the relationship of Joel and Clementine, two vastly different individuals who meet and fall in love. We know that the couple breaks up, and it has such an impact that Clementine contacts the Lacuna firm to have her memories of Joel erased. As tit for tat, Joel hastily makes an appointment for the procedure; it is carried out in his apartment by a couple of technicians and the company’s administrative assistant, who are all dealing with their own romantic entanglements (Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, and Kirsten Dunst). The majority of the movie flips back and forth (often at a frantic pace) between memories of Joel and Clementine and the Lacuna employees as Joel tries desperately to hold on to the good times the couple shared.

No one in Kaufman’s films is particularly dashing or charismatic; they are all very realistic, flawed human beings dealing with very real, sometimes mundane problems in an unreal setting. While all of Kaufman’s movies deal with some aspect of the mind, rarely (if ever) is there a film that so accurately portrays what it’s like inside someone’s head as Eternal Sunshine does. Things are not neat, pretty, organized, or fully-formed; we exist largely in a world of fragments, splintered memories and knowledge. Sometimes we have pieces of information without realizing how or why we know them, we also tend to construct our own memories based around objects and photographs, even though we don’t actual “remember” the events pictured. The bliss and battles of Joel and Clementine’s relationship are the background for this is the bittersweet and perplexing inner world.

Traveling through Joel’s mind, and thus his relationship, will cause you to walk a path of similar memories and/or relationships in your own life; this can lead to gut-wrenching results depending on the viewer. Each audience member brings a lot to this film that will influence their opinion; you’ll either be brought to tears (and possibly the fetal position), think it’s weird, or at least just admire the effort put forth. This is all part of the brilliance of Kaufman’s script, which, when combined with one of Carey’s best performances and Michel Gondry’s evenhanded directing, results in a beautiful statement on the importance of pain, heartbreak, and loss.

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