A bad movie that might make you physically ill

Rating: Null/10 (27 March 2004)

This film coulda been a contenduh......but not as produced.
The premise wasn't bad. What happens when a relationship fails, and you want to erase all the memories of it from your mind? Can you? Can you cope with what happens when you try?
Shy, sweet, backward Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and crazy, impulsive, freedom-loving Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) have this problem. Their relationship falls apart and Clementine has Joel erased at a company called "Lacuna" (Latin for 'pit', medical term for 'gap or missing part'.) Joel, at first baffled by her behavior, finds out and has /her/ erased. But he can't erase the longing, the yearning and the regret--it is still there, though now it has nothing to attach itself to. This, according to the filmmakers, can make a person depressed. Not that the principles of this movie aren't /already/ depressed. They certainly seem to be having a difficult time coping with normal life(Winslet's character actually seems to be psychotic in some scenes, and Carrey retreats from life at a breakneck pace at times;) but imagine, if you will, that this depression deepens and lingers and makes it difficult to function in even normal situations.
Basically, those are the bones of the film. Bad relationship. Erase the memories. Cope with results. Stir in a sub-plot about (hold on to your hats here,) a bad relationship...erasing those memories...trying to cope with those results...and yet another subplot about (no, I'm NOT kidding) a BAD RELATIONSHIP, which is most certainly headed for erasure...yes, it's THAT repetitious. Filmmaker Michael Gondry has absolutely nothing new to tell us. Relationships--he seems to want us to know because he keeps hitting us over the head with this huge hammer --sometimes fail. Well, duh.
Carrey is competent, as is Winslet, but they have minimal chemistry together. Also, there is very little reason to think even for a moment, that the relationship that Joel Barish finds with Clementine is affecting enough for either one of them that they would have this much trouble forgetting each other, let alone need to have their memories erased completely. Given that very basic, but totally unsupported premise, the rest of the movie just falls apart, logically and emotionally.
And when you add to this the incredibly annoying hand-held camera technique that the filmmakers thought was necessary to show the difference between 'real' (?) and 'memory' lives, you have a film that makes you flinch, fidget and blink about 15 minutes into it and doesn't let up until 35 seconds before the ending. If you stick it out, it might even make you physically nauseated from all the visual disturbances it creates! It's not only like watching the sinking ship of a bad relationship, (hell--it's more like watching the sinking of the entire Spanish ARMADA,) but you also get the seasickness to go along with it.
That I could definitely have done without. It ruined the whole experience.
Other performers are just wasted. Kirsten Dunst as Mary, the nurse at Lacuna who is hopelessly involved with Doctor Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson;) Patrick (Elijah Wood,) who is in love with Clementine as well; and Mark Ruffalo a technician who is in love with Dunst's character, all have such thin parts that no development is possible, and the film resorts to whacking you over the head with their stories too. You get whacked a lot in this movie.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind might have had potential, but it is ruined by gimmick and an immature vision of reality that just doesn't gel into a reason, or set of reasons, for the action involved, and by camera techinique that ought to be banned for any but the smallest screens. Nearly everyone in attendance at this film was looking somewhere other than at the screen, or asleep. Or they walked out for relief from the visual gymnastics.

I don't recommend it, and I hope these filmmakers grow up a little before attempting another film.