Kaufman genius

Rating: 10/10 (2 September 2006)

Ingrates that we are, we've probably grown unappreciatively accustomed to Charlie Kaufman's mind game comedies of late. Certainly there's more than a echo of the tone set by Being John Malkovich here. But what separates Eternal Sunshine is that it is no mere flight of fantasy, no mere intellectual plaything of a film. It's a stonking great moving, emotional, true, hilarious, joyful success of a film, with nary a hair out of place in its dissection of memory, love, motivation and life. It distills and dissects every corner and corridor of the question it asks itself with precision, purity and pleasure whilst never over egging the pudding. It always finds exactly the right direction to go in at exactly the right time and constantly entertains the audience. It's been a few years since I've seen a film where I not only don't know how it will end, but am actually keen to find out. The ending didn't disappoint. This will find its way into my DVD collection very, very quickly.