a beautifully executed tale drowning in both humor and melancholy

Rating: 10/10 (15 June 2017)

With Charlie Kaufman's always brilliant writing, Michel Gondry's beautiful direction, and Jim Carrey's haunting performance all culminating into a single work of magic art, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is a must see. Kaufman's world is realistically populated through often funny and occasionally painful dialogue, interesting characters, and unexpected twists and turns. Kaufman is able to take full advantage of the cinematic art form by bending the conventions of film structure forming a work that combines narrative and nonlinear storytelling as well as brutal realism and wacky surrealism. This is not a film full of clichés, it is not a tragedy, nor is it a straight up comedy, but it contains a great bit of both. It is a film of reality; however, not in the sense that it is boring or painstakingly mundane, for it is quite the contrary. Through subtlety, foreshadowing, dialogue, etc., Kaufman is able to create a movie that is totally believable despite its strange concept.
Although i am not the biggest fan of shaky cam, it is utilized in this film quite well. Michel Gondry's often disorienting, but still surprisingly visually appealing, use of hand-held camera-work allows viewers to drop themselves deeper into the film's bizarre storyline. If one were in the same state as Carrey's character is throughout much of the film, Gondry's camera-work and Kaufman's knack for absurdist detail would probably perfectly match their experience.
Honestly, it is hard to put to words how unique this film is, which is sort of what makes it (and many other films that would film this category) unique. It is the type of film that would likely lure the curious with DESCRIPTIONS of its events, then utterly surprise them when these events occur, not because they're at all disappointing, but because of their context and relation to the film. I could describe various comical and surreal visuals that manage to provoke, astound, amuse, and possibly disturb, but it is more important that a reader seeks out this beautiful work if they have yet to see it. I am glad that it is so popular and widely praised among critics and audiences alike, and I hope its comic, melancholic, and hopeful charms reach an even further number of people, and I hope that I see more films of these kind being produced on a much more regular basis in the near future.