Charlie Kaufman, As Usual, Trying Too Hard

Rating: 3/10 (3 November 2007)

What is it with Charlie Kaufman? He gets these weird little concepts that would work beautifully in a clean, spare, twenty-two minute "Twilight Zone" episode, and he insists on milking them and overworking them and pumping them up with pseudo-intellectualism and pseudo-artsy fartsy -isms, to two hour, faux deep messes. Doesn't Charlie Kaufman ever bore himself? I liked "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" much better before I actually saw it. Reviewers praised the movie. The concept was intriguing: brokenhearted couples, fresh out of painful relationships, hire a strip-mall MD -- with a gratuitously Polish name -- Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) -- to erase the painful memories. Who among us has not had that wish? That we could erase the painful past? Now that I've seen it, though, I like the movie a lot less.
Kate Winslet as Clementine, a gratingly obnoxious, psycho shrew with yet another gratuitously Polish name  Kruczynski -- sort of a blue-orange-haired version of Elizabeth Taylor's Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?" -- is terrific here. I wish Kate could have given this same masterful performance in a successful movie.
Jim Carrey is always good. He's a multi-millionaire dollar box office star who has earned every penny. He conveys, with complete verisimilitude, Joel's vulnerability and social ineptitude.
Clementine (Winslet) has borderline personality disorder. That's never stated; one can conclude that from her behavior. Joel (Carrey) has social anxiety disorder, or has no personality. Their relationship, in real life, would probably end up with a sawed-off shotgun, a manslaughter charge, and plea bargaining. Hard to root for this couple. I never cared if they got back together, or did not, or if they forgot each other, or did not. They have exactly two human moments together: when Clementine begs Joel to reassure her that she is pretty, and when Joel is urged, by bullies, to kill a wounded bird. Those two moments should have been in a better movie.
Kirsten Dunst has a small part as the vapid, blond, half-naked slut no pretentious movie would be complete without; bug-eyed Elijah Wood irritatingly reminds us how lucky he was to snag the lead in those magical elf movies. Mark Ruffalo is all too believable as an unappealing nerd, who, in spite of a nice body, looks utterly icky dancing in his underwear.
If only this film could have been made under the Old Studio system. The execs would have stolen Kaufman's nifty concept. Kaufman would have gone off to become a ruined alcoholic, but audiences would get a moving classic.
As it is, we get chopped up images that are not moving, that are not coherent, that don't make you care about anything, and that alienate a vast portion of viewers.
Scenes are unnecessarily ugly. Jim Carrey is a naturally handsome man; here he is denied shaving privileges, and apparently he was forbidden from washing his hair. Bad hygiene is Kaufman's trick for communicating that he's made an art movie. For the viewer, it just means that every character looks as if he or she has very bad breath.
Will someone please tell Charlie Kaufman: LESS IS MORE. I'm using all caps because this guy is so heavy handed I'm guessing he wouldn't hear anything that isn't shouted.
One scene where a character's face is melting is enough. You don't have to revisit that same trick fifteen minutes later and have four characters' faces melting.
After the film conveys the cool "memory erasing" concept, it wanders aimlessly and repetitively for the next hour and a half or so of chaotic special effects. Houses fall down; characters disappear. There's nothing here that you haven't seen before; in fact, you can experience the essential effect just by looking at the Salvador Dali painting with the melting clock.
Apparently a lot of people were confused by this movie. To clarify: 1.) Charlie Kaufman wants you to know that life is about both the bitter and the sweet. Life would be less if we took only the sweet, and deleted the bitter.
2.) Charlie Kaufman wants you to know that Charlie Kaufman is a deep guy.
3.) Hygiene is overrated; similarly, the lack of hygiene is a sign that this is a prestige film.
I'm still confused about this: 1.) What's with the gratuitously Polish names?