A breath-taking chase through the subconscious

Rating: 10/10 (16 September 2004)

-SPOILERS-
This is a brilliant movie. The uniqueness of the plot surpasses even Being John Malkovich, which was my favourite movie before this. Everything falls into place: writing, editing, casting, music. The only thing that disturbed me was the ending, because I felt it was resolved a little too quickly. However, this is possibly the best stuff I've ever seen from Kaufman, and great work from Winslet and Carrey.
There are many different ways of making a movie like this(I could imagine the writers trying different strategies before coming up with this one). The timeline is very important. The true brilliance of the movie is in the time sequence. It can be very confusing at first, but it's also very intriguing.
There are many scenes where you are led to expect a more chronological narrative. In the beginning of the movie, when Joel and Clementine meet, you are fooled to thinking it's the first time they meet. Cue the opening credits and their breakup. When Joel is at the doctor's office, he starts talking about the first time they met; we see a film rolling, showing the party where it happened. You might expect to see their whole relationship in flashbacks with Joel as the narrator, but the flashback is cut off and we're back in the story. What you then see is their whole relationship in flashbacks, but in a REVERSED order, with Joel being aware of the procedure and trying to change the chain of events. He isn't narrating old events to the viewers, he is reliving them and trying to hold on to the memories as they are disappearing before his eyes. The result is a breath-taking chase through Joel's subconscious - somewhat similar to the one in Being John Malkovich, but more deep. At the same time, we see the "erasers" working at Joel's apartment and their relationship with each other, which also becomes somewhat surprising.
The movie deals with a lot of deep issues. For example, how love turns into hate; how the memory works; how you have to erase a person from your life totally when you break up, and a big part of yourself too. In the end, Joel and Clementine decide to fall in love all over again, despite the problems they had. It can be seen as a statement: even if love isn't easy, it's always worth living.
10/10.