Putting the virtually impossible on film

Rating: 10/10 (25 March 2004)

I saw this film the day it came out, last Friday, and nearly a week later I am attempting to put onto the page how deeply I feel about it.

I can start by saying that I have the most profound respect for Charlie Kaufman - I think he and Mike White are the most brilliantly subversive (and subversively brilliant) screenwriters working today - and in Eternal Sunshine, with his team of superb actors and a kindred spirit director, Kaufman once again does what only he can do: probe, stretch, and literally recreate the depths of his chosen reality, turning it inside out, around and back again, without ever losing sight of his story's priorities at any given time. He's a masterful writer with a daring mind that knows no boundaries or limitations, and in this film he directs his unflinching genius at relationships -- the human need for them, the over-whelming fragility of them, and most profoundly, the pain they cause when we expect another person to fulfill the parts of ourselves that cannot be filled by another person - the illusions we have about each other, the baggage we bring to any new encounter, the neurotic preconceptions that pretty much doom any relationship once it gets past the newness phase.
Kaufman shows this to us brilliantly (and subversively) in the course of Eternal Sunshine, but this is just part of the "magic" he pulls off here: he also actually manages to get inside the mind of his main character (played with unerring poignancy by Jim Carrey) and show us his subconscious process - this is not easily accomplished without resorting to cliches galore, but Kaufman and his crew manage to pull it off without a hitch.