fractured scenes from a fractured affair

Rating: 9/10 (3 April 2008)

Really outstanding work by everybody. Michel Gondry has as much fun with Charlie Kaufman's scripts as Spike Jones does, but the Frenchman seems to find more poignancy in his moments. I love Jones - MALKOVICH is the best puppet movie since MARQUIS, and ADAPTATION's just about my favorite movie about movies - but there's a depth and gravity in SUNSHINE that invests Kaufman's odd world with greater humanity. This is maybe the saddest comedy I can remember.
Jim Carrey manages not to ruin everything, and in fact gives a very nice, affecting, unaffected performance. Kate Winslet is delightful, the girlfriend every loner wishes would chat him up on the train. Tom Wilkinson is once again just right, simple, subtle, very funny. The crazy kids who work at the erasure shop play with giddy abandon, veining the serious tone with welcome slapstick exuberance. And Jane Adams and David Cross are just perfect as the exact friends this lummox would have.
There are moments of every relationship that might be best forgotten. Or are there? How much happier would I be if I hadn't done that thing that time, or come home early that day, or heard what she said in the wrong tone of voice that night after we both should have just gone to sleep. Did we break up because of those things? Would we have broken up anyway even if we found a magic memory remover? Would it be preferable to know what's coming, to cut and run and avoid the heartbreak later - heartbreak, to anyone who's had it, is after all about as bad as it gets - or is that just living in denial of the true nature of experience? Don't ask me while my heart's still broken, because I'll surely cop out of the real deal. So am I more of a man simply because I never had the option of forgetting my great mistakes?