Kaufman keeps up the excellent work

Rating: 9/10 (6 April 2004)

*spoilers? I don't think so*
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is an excellent consideration of the implications of memory loss. Or rather, memory erasure. I imagine most readers know the basic plot elements by now: Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play a pair of lovers who have decided that their relationship has gotten so awful that it would be better to not be able to remember it at all. Or, to be more accurate, she wipes him from her memory after a vicious comment he makes in an argument, and, despondent, he follows suit.
The main part of the movie consists of Carrey's character Joel Barrish in a pseudo-dream sequence as the technicians from the memory erasure clinic slowly remove his important memories involving his girlfriend Clementine (Winslet), one by one. The nonchalance of the technicians, played by Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood, contrasts strongly with Joel's increasing despondence, as he realizes to his horror that he wishes to hold onto his memories, as the good memories reflect the best times of his otherwise miserable life.
These sequences hit deep emotional chords. One of the nice things about Charlie Kaufman films (I'm thinking of this film, "Being John Malkovich", and "Adaptation"), is that his characters are not brimming with glamour as happens so often in Hollywood. Cusack is pathetic in "Malkovich", Cage is lumpy and detached in "Adaptation", and in this film, Carrey is a bit grimy, while Winslet is deeply flighty. The supporting cast is also excellent; in addition to Ruffalo and Wood, Tom Wilkinson and Kirsten Dunst do excellent jobs as the memory removal doctor and his receptionist, respectively.

This movie is science fiction at its best. Science fiction, when the genre started, was not so much about flying through space and killing aliens, but rather about working with a simple concept, in this case memory erasure, and tugging on that thread, so to speak, to see how such a possibility would change our lives. While other films in recent years, most notably Memento and Vanilla Sky, have tackled this subject, none have done it with the appreciation of grubby humanity that Kaufman brings to the topic.
Some reviewers have complained that the movie was confusing in direction, and weighed down by Kaufman's eccentricities. I could not disagree more! For me, the eccentricities are essential!