Delicate and dark inquiry into the nature of love memories

Rating: 10/10 (19 March 2004)

I just walked out of the movie from a midnight screening not knowing anything about the film. The first moment I saw Jim Carrey, I thought, "Is this going to suck?"
I was very wrong.
Carrey gives a solid performance and he breaks out of his comedic casting remarkably. Kate Winslet played her role great as well. But what really captured it, for me, was the storyline, the directing, and the editing.
The "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" is about erasing a bad memory. And what worse of a memory is there than an ex-girlfriend?
Reflecting on my own relationships, I see the pattern that goes from great pain, to anger, to a desire to sweep-it-under-the-rug, and then finally to thankfulness. A sense of loss is common to each part of the process, but is reacted to in very varying ways. That sense of loss cannot be conveyed in a word or even a moment in time. That's why I am glad that the movie dealt with loss and yearning for the whole film, and in so doing, I felt like it gave a realistic depiction of it.
How is loss conveyed on the screen? The editing, storyline, and sound (FX and music) were so sharp and reminiscent of a pure stream-of-conscious, that it really communicated what goes on in my head. Scrambling, focused anger, ambiguity, half-truths and layers upon layers of intentions and interpretations.
It reminded me of Requiem for a Dream, where the visuals really gave a sense of what it means to be addicted. And Requiem spent the better part of the moving developing that idea, rather than be plot-driven. Similarly, Eternal Sunshine had a plot, but it didn't seem plot driven. Jim Carrey (Joel) seemed to go exactly where a real-life Joel would be going, rather than to where the audience would like to think of Joel's post-break-up mind would go. That darkness is a bit anti-Hollywood, though I bet there are those who might say that the darkness is slowly becoming Hollywood. Regardless, it is still dark.
The delicacy comes in with the nuanced sounds and visual sequences. I came out of the film feeling like there were long periods of very little sound. Certainly, the lack of background music at times really helped the emotional impact reach its full effect. At other times, garbled electronic gibberish and whispers might envelop the scene, gestures toward the Joel's torrid state of mind. It was fast where it needed to be, but more importantly, it had slowness. The resulting rhythms (which, although I know I felt them in the movie, I can't pinpoint how it happens) helped take me and the audience on the ride, guided by this delicate, dark, and beautiful little film.
If you dissed the movie because of the trailer, please ignore that impression. The trailer (that I saw) didn't do justice to the movie.