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| Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) |
Okay, where to begin here? Well, first of all, the concept is genius. It's one of those ideas where you hear it and you're astounded a movie like that wasn't made sooner. A company that erases all your memories of a person to help you get over them? There's almost limitless stories you can tell with that concept, and I was impressed to discover that's almost what they do here. The script is incredibly well written, and the way it weaves all the different stories throughout into one strand by the end is masterful. Going in, I expected the movie to pretty much just focus on Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, but there's a surprising amount of side stories here as well. You've got the technicians and their encounters with the technology, you've got the guy who basically steals Jim Carrey's identity because he 'fell in love' with Kate Winslet, and there's also the brief glimpse we get at Joel's family trying to keep Clementine a secret once she erases him. It does what I was worried it might do, which I tend to see a lot, is take a really interesting and unique concept and then not go anywhere with it, and this absolutely didn't.
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| Kate Winslet as Clementine |
Which isn't to say the focus isn't on Joel Barish, because it really is. In fact, the movie spends a lot more time on the erasure process than I thought it would. I really thought a bulk of the movie was going to be Joel and Clementine in their relationship the second time and bits and pieces of their first relationship keep coming back to them and they want answers. But it doesn't do that. Initially I was off-put, and a little worried. I didn't know how they were going to keep this part of the movie fresh and interesting throughout. I soon found out. They play around with Joel's experience inside his own head a lot, and they do a lot of different things with it. Firstly, I love how when it started happening, it wasn't clear if it was a replaying, erading memory or just another flashback, and playing with the audience's perception of reality like that early on is really clever, especially when things get intense later. Joel goes through a lot of phases in this chunk of the film. There's the initial bewilderment, the surreal horror, the fighting to keep the memories (and succeeding for a moment), resignation and finally wistful nostalgia. It all felt really natural and the pacing was perfect, but what really made this section work so well was the visuals and direction. Honestly, me even trying to describe how they brought this concept to life visually would be doing it a huge disservice, which is basically code for 'Watch the movie if you haven't already, you f***ing idiot'. And, I know, prior to today, I was the f***ing idiot, but still.
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| Jim Carrey as Joel |
I was really impressed with Jim Carrey in this role, because it's not the sort of thing you normally see him do. He was really reserved, and there's not as much 'rubber face Jim Carrey lunacy' as you'd expect from him. There are moments of it, certainly, but they work in context and don't sacrifice the character overall. They work for their moments of comedy too, so there's that. He and Kate Winslet also had fantastic chemistry together. Winslet herself had a lot to work with in this role. She had to play not just the real Clementine, but Joel's idealistic version of Clementine that he remembers in his head, and she played both really well. It's more subtle than I'm making it out to be, but it is there. But, honestly, the same could be applied to the relationship as a whole. There are a lot of different phases of this relationship the film presents throughout the film, and not only does it make it even harder for itself and present it to us in reverse order, but Carrey and Winslet perform each stage of the relationship beautifully. Even in their more dysfunctional moments, there's still that underlying chemistry underneath, and it's probably one of the most real relationships I've ever seen put on screen.
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| Kirsten Dunst as Mary |
Even all the supporting characters play their roles perfectly. I actually really loved Kirsten Dunst in this movie. There it is. Proof positive it wasn't her fault in Spider-Man. She was fantastic here, and she has a lot more to do than you think after her first couple of scenes, and they were some of the more interesting moments in the movie, but what's amazing about them is how they didn't just come out of nowhere. I noticed little things throughout the movie that built up to the eventual reveal, and I'm sure I'd notice more on a second viewing. Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood were excellent as the technicians, and I love how second-nature the job is to them by this point. It's just another job for them, which I think is a commentary on how really impressive and, in all honesty, god-like technology can become commonplace and pedestrian over time. I may be reading into it a bit much, but the fact that Jim Carrey had never even heard of the technology before, while Ruffalo and Wood were basically able to have their own conversations and everything else while they were working it kind of says it all to me. I don't usually get this analytic in my reviews, but it's that kind of story. It's so clever, and I really want to discuss it further, but I don't have the time. And, yeah, I have a couple of gripes here and there, but none of them amount to much in the end, as this movie is something I haven't experienced in a movie in a long time. It's a movie that's, ironically, just nice. It's a nice movie, and it leaves you so incredibly satisfied by the end that it makes you forget everything you thought was wrong with it. Case in point: until right before the last couple of lines, I was considering rating this around a 9. Then, the way it wrapped up... that didn't feel appropriate anymore.
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| Mark Ruffalo as Stan |
Because Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is just one of the most clever, unique and, again, nice movies I've ever seen. I should have watched this on Valentine's Day instead of the movie that must not be mentioned. Well, we're here now. 10/10.
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