A classic

Rating: 10/10 (1 March 2005)

What kind of classic is this movie? Well, it's a romantic comedy. That's about all there is to say: It's a post-modern romantic comedy, a romantic comedy concerned with the idea of self hood in our world, but in the end the movie is about two quirky characters looking for love.
When people say that a movie has value because it fore goes explosions and violence for... well... nothing, I think they're missing the point. You can make an intelligent, insightful movie while spraying blood at the audience, and you can make a dreadful, moronic piece of garbage without having one interesting thing happen. In the wake of the indie-film revolution, movies that follow the latter convention - yes, it's become a convention - haven't overtaken big-budget bombast per se, but they are a nice safe way for mediocre movie stars to gain indie credit.
Then there's a movie like this. All those people who consider absence of spectacular destruction requisite for a good movie are assuming the existence of movies like this. Nothing happens in "Eternal Sunshine" - think about it: The main character is asleep most of the time; all the action is memory, and a lot of it isn't even accurate memory. What emerges is - in my opinion - the most genuinely moving portrait of the human soul that's ever been committed to film. People, like Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in the movie, are naive and foolish and like to think that the best world is one in which there is no pain or grief, so when Charlie Kaufman and co. introduce the terrific sci-fi trope of a memory-erasing machine they jump at the opportunity to lose those nagging, unpleasant moments.
But you can't remove something from a person without destroying a part of who that person is, and that is exactly the course the movie tracks. The treatment destroys part of Jim Carrey's character. There's an old clichÃ©, "If you chase out your devils, your angels will leave"; when Jim Carrey watches his fights with Kate Winslet vanish, he's chasing out the devils. But when, in the film's absolute best scene, he kneels and begs his mind to let him keep one happy memory, he's watching his angels leave.
As for the rest, the acting is wonderfully naturalistic, both by the lead and supporting characters (I hold it very much to Elijah Wood's credit that he can leave his Frodo persona in last year), the cinematography - especially in the opening scenes - is brilliant and calming, and the film's portrayals of the inside of the human mind are smart and interesting.
Yes, it is a romantic comedy, and yes, it borders territory that could be insufferably pretentious. But "Eternal Sunshine" is a movie with a real soul.