Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Released 2004
Stars Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo
Directed by Michel Gondry

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot.Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.   -- Alexander Pope, "Eloisa to Abelard"

It's one thing to wash that man right outta your hair, and another to erase him from your mind. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" imagines a scientific procedure that can obliterate whole fields of memory -- so that, for example, Clementine can forget that she ever met Joel, let alone fell in love with him. "Is there any danger of brain damage?" the inventor of the process is asked. "Well," he allows, in his most kindly voice, "technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage."

The movie is a labyrinth created by the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, whose "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" were neorealism compared to this. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play Joel and Clementine, in a movie that sometimes feels like an endless series of aborted Meet Cutes. That they lose their minds while all about them are keeping theirs is a tribute to their skill; they center their characters so that we can actually care about them even when they're constantly losing track of their own lives. The movie is a radical example of Maze Cinema, that style in which the story coils back upon itself, redefining everything and then throwing it up in the air and redefining it again.

Summary by Roger Ebert

This film is a treat. I love melancholy, whether it's music like the Ass Ponys or Radiohead or movies like this one. I loved the way the movie wove back and forth in time and in and out of Joel's mind. Both of these techniques are quite common now, but this plot was built for them. It uses the techniques perfectly to make it somber as we watch Joel's painful memories being erased and then even sadder as he tries to hang onto the happy ones. I also liked what the movie had to say about relationships. If you're attracted to someone, that attraction will always be there--regardless of how many times you erase them from your memory. --Bill Alward, November 5, 2004