Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
– Alexander Pope

I saw the new Jim Carrey movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” last night and it’s a really great movie…

If you’re expecting the usual kind of Jim Carrey movie, you’ll be disappointed and probably leave the theatre with a headache. Eternal Sunshine tell the story of Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), Joel skips a day of work and heads for an impulsive train trip to Mautak and the beach where he meets Clementine. She’s as quirky as she is attractive, and he’s not the most normal guy in town, and they fall in love.

Or do they?

Something odd appears to be going on, reaching a crisis when Clementine starts reacting to Joel as if they’d never met. Eventually he discovers what’s happened, deciding to end their affair, she’s gone through a bizarre brain procedure that’s erased her memories of him. Rejected, insulted, and downright miserable, Joel seeks out the mind-meddling psychiatrist and requests the same treatment.

Along the way he regrets his decision, realising how good their relationship was for him. He persuades his mental Clementine to evade the memory-killing process, hiding in ever-deeper layers of his mind where the shrink’s psychiatric software won’t penetrate, which invariably leads to bizarre moments as a game of cerebral cat-and-mouse take place as Joel lies unconscious while the memory erasing technicians (played by Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) and the distracted doctor (Tom Wilkinson) try to figure out why his brain waves are falling off the computer screen.

I won’t give away too much, but there are some simply brilliant moments in the movie with the editing, especially of the chase down the street after Clementine leaves. Director Michel Gondry does an excellent job of telling a story that could have very easily been a complete disaster. He is able to keep the scenes moving in such a way that you feel like you are watching someone’s actual memories. Joel and Clementine move through the space of Joel’s mind with great fluidity. Watching a relationship in reverse and seeing the participants make comments on how they screwed up gives real insight into how relationships work, and fail.

It’s a really complicated story that requires your full attention, the film isn’t for everyone and most will probably not like it. Basically it’s a smart, intelligent story that looks at relationships and how they go from first love to self-destructiveness as time goes on. Ultimately it asks it’s audience, “If you knew how your relationship would end, would you start in the first place?” and only you can answer that…