Spotted Hearts (Minor Spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (28 March 2004)

It would be easy for any reviewer talking about Michael Gondry's new film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, to get caught up in talking about the clever memory-erasure device that Charlie Kaufman dreamed up, but to do so would be a grave mistake. While the Lacuna operation's ability to purge all the memories of a person is a fascinating device, it's merely a coat rack for the heart of the film to drape itself on.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at its heart is a romantic comedy. It's not a romantic comedy that Meg Ryan or Sandra Bullock would star in by any means, but it is not far removed from the likes of Annie Hall, portraying romance and love as the bumpy and unreliable beasts that most people experience them as.
Now, although I have used the word comedy, Jim Carrey fans should be warned not to expect the usual rubber-faced laugh-it-up antics that the actor often delivers (or at least tries to deliver). Carrey's Joel is almost universally straight faced and dull. He refers to himself (and is referred to by Clementine) as `nice', as in `nice' meaning boring. Clementine (played by Kate Winslet), on the other hand, is impulsive, spontaneous, wild, and generally quite the energetic woodland sprite. Her hair color frequently shifts throughout the film, more frequently than even her wardrobe which is haunted by the orange sweater-style jacket that she wears when she and Joel first meet.
The pair would seem completely incompatible at first glance but seem to share some kind of deeper connection, as if they had shared a love in another lifetime that had somehow outwitted death to come back again. Unfortunately though, even the strongest emotions can't completely avoid spots of turbulence, and the pair's conflicting traits eventually do cause a painful clash and separation as Clementine storms out of Joel's apartment after he accuses her of using sex to get people to like her.
Joel is distraught when he realizes his error. We see him crying in his car later the same night. Over the next few days, he tries to make a move toward reconciliation. He buys Clementine a necklace and tries to take it to her at work, but when he gets there he finds out that she no longer even recognizes him. There is no anger, frustration, sadness, or bitterness. There is simply a void where Joel should be.
Joel finds out from his friends that Clementine has undergone an operation through which all memories of him have been erased from her mind. Impulsive and unwilling or unable to deal with the pain of the break-up, Clementine simply chose to forget everything that had ever transpired between her and Joel.
The meat of the film begins when Joel decides in a fit of helplessness that he will also undergo the operation and have Clementine wiped from his brain. Gondry's slightly surrealistic style takes center stage as we follow a backwards tour of Joel's relationship with Clementine inside his brain.
The first memories are painful. They're fights close to the break-up, and Joel is glad to be rid of them, yelling at Clementine with a certain degree of spiteful glee. As their story winds back though, Joel finds himself swimming in the happier times when his love for her was at its most powerful. He quickly realizes that he's made a horrible mistake, and Gondry (and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman) twist our heart-strings into figurative balloon animals as we watch Joel struggling to hold on to even the smallest memory of Clementine, only to watch her vanish again and again. He is constantly thrown back to earlier memories, knowing that like a ticking time bomb he is slowly moving toward their first encounter after which he will have no recollection of her or their love.
Intercut with Joel's struggle are the complicated romantic entanglements of the Lacuna staff, including a slightly unethical relationship between uber-creepy Stan (Elijah Wood) and a freshly re-programmed Clementine. Even as she seems to take to Stan, she clearly is confused and upset by the absence of Joel, suggesting that even though Lacuna may have destroyed her memory of the relationship her emotions remained untouched. Clementine is possessed by feelings that her mind can provide no explanation for. She feels compelled to re-live experiences that she's had with Joel, except they don't play right because she re-lives them with Stan instead.

While the memory plot is fascinating and proves a great way to tell the story of Joel and Clementine's relationship, the real story of the movie is that the technology is ultimately a bust. After the procedure, both Joel and Clementine are lost at sea, searching for each other without knowing what they're searching for or why they're searching to begin with. It's a testament to the power of love in people, and the foolishness of denying that love no matter how rough and difficult sometimes holding on to that love may be.
Despite it's clever tricks, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind has its heart in the human heart, and that's what makes it one of the most powerful movies I've seen in years.