Eternally Confusing and Disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (23 January 2008)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a complex character study of a couple's relationship with an experimental twist. What would happen if turbulent memories of their relationship were erased? How would they react to themselves, each other, and the world around them? The story on paper may represent an interesting scientific research project for some advanced college experimental psychology course. However, in being conveyed to film, ESOTSM doesn't work. The film has more continuity holes than swiss cheese! Time sequences shift all over the place, along with dialog that is disjointed and discombobulated. There are so many scene changes, life changes, and character subplots, that come and go on a whim that you don't know how to follow the movie, and if you do follow the movie, you become confused and utterly lost. What is worse, is that without a road map to follow, or at least SOME beginning, middle, and end to the story, many viewers will not care about this relationship, because there is no reason to do so.
The movie would have been better with a firmer placed start, middle, and finish, getting to know the characters, the risks and benefits of the memory experiment, and having the actors relate to the viewers their thoughts and ideas through time periods that are at least somewhat organized or have closure to them. You need a PhD to try to figure out who's coming and going in this movie! By the time you learn about the character(s,) they disappear off the screen. When you see them again (if you even see them again) you're thinking, "Now, who were they again? What are they doing here?" The whispering, often drowning out the dialog, makes the plot even more hard to follow. There is far too much happening at once with not enough substance, consistency, or empathy, about the characters to really care about this film.