Insecure nerds of the world, unite! Our leader has been anointed. Again. He has been before, but being as short on self-confidence as he is, it’s taken yet another brilliant screenplay to reaffirm Charlie Kaufman as the film world’s pre-eminent voice for the timid, the self-loathing, and those who can’t imagine ever looking a stranger of the opposite sex in the eye. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind goes where Adaptation and Being john Malkovich went, but then it goes farther. Like a Woody Allen who digs deeper – way deeper – Kaufman has again found the truth of what makes us tick and has reflected it back to us.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind explores the fears and insecurities of a nerd in love, exploding the myth of facile young love inevitably ageing into distance and cynicism, and replacing it with a far more complex image of the truth for so many of us – we’re just too damned scared to take intimacy another step forward, especially once the initial kamikaze fearlessness of a new relationship begins to wane. Kaufman’s Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) is a man in search of greater meaning, but when he finds it in the form of the free spirited (and frankly slightly unbalanced) Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), he’s terrified without even knowing it. And so is she. There goes another myth – that of the free spirit having no fear.
Both Joel and Clementine seek out a novel way of avoiding the intimacy that so freaks them out – they each hire the services of specialist on the far fringes of medical science – Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson is understatedly brilliant as the doctor who finds that his miracle cure doesn’t exactly tidy his own life), a man able to selectively remove memories from his patient’s brains. Tired or disillusioned with your lover? Hire Dr. Mierzwiak and he’ll wipe clean all memories of the person – give you a ‘spotless mind.’
All this is allegorical, of course, as Kaufman and director Michel Gondry explore love, memory, and the stress between forgetting a painful past and building a happy future. It’s fascinating, perplexing, occasionally confusing, and often extremely funny. And ultimately, it’s also touching, as Joel and Clementine learn the truth about love, REAL love, in the most painful of ways.
The trick here is that – after a straightforward start – the machinations of Dr. Mierzwiak’s mind-cleansing machine start to affect what we’re seeing onscreen. Is this actually happening? Is it just Joel’s memory? A fantasy? Or are we going to loop back and find that what we’re seeing all happened earlier and is just now being erased from his mind? A few minutes of confusion are well worth struggling through, as it soon becomes clear what’s going on. All that isn’t clear is whether or not Joel and Clementine will stop running away from each other and find the truth – that love brings together imperfect people and that we need both the richness of memories AND the need to live every moment like it’s about to be wiped from our consciousness forever.
The cast of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is terrific. Carrey’s manic comedy is kept carefully under rein, creating a sad, sympathetic and only occasionally goofy Joel. Winslet is totally authentic as the enigmatic Clementine, changing hair colour as frequently as she changes men, clearly in search of meaning but not giving herself time to find it. Mark Ruffalo and Kirsten Dunst are also very good as Dr. Mierzwiak’s employees – Dunst is heartbreaking as the receptionist with a tragic crush on her boss.
