10 Best Films of the Decade 2000’s #4 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004): USA
Reviewed by Byron Potau. Viewed on DVD.
Continuing my list of the ten best films of the decade, at #4 is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Though many would say it’s a romantic comedy it is clearly much more than that, so much so that I find myself asking the question “Why is this film not higher on my list?”
Is it truly better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? In other words, was it worth it? In bizarre fashion writer Charlie Kaufman answers this question by imagining an alternative. What if we could simply erase that person from our memory. It’s an idea so brilliantly complex and ingeniously simply it is simultaneously hard to imagine why no one has ever thought of it before and easy to see why they haven’t, but that is the beauty of one of cinema’s greatest and most unique writers.
Joel (Jim Carrey) discovers his recent ex-girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet) has erased their relationship from her memory. Almost in retaliation he decides to erase her rather than be the only one to feel the pain of their breakup. As the process ensues Joel has second thoughts about the procedure, but is powerless to do anything to stop it. He tries to hide memories of her in the dark recesses of his mind, but her erasure is inevitable.
Everything seems to come together perfectly in this film. Ellen Kuras’s cinematography has a wonderfully appropriate bleakness. Director Michel Gondry, along with some tremendous visual effects, do an excellent job of fusing memories together, and blending the dream world with the real world.
Valdis Oskarsdottir’s editing cleverly weaves together what could easily have become convoluted, making perfect sense of a story that boldly moves in and out of dreams and reality, delighting, but never confusing the viewer.
Jon Brion provides a charming score, and the James Warren penned and Beck sung “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime” will linger in your head long after the movie ends.
Jim Carrey is excellently cast against type as the soft spoken, introverted Joel, although he gets plenty of opportunity to be outlandish as his character goes through a wild ride of emotions and situations including acting out memories of himself when he was a child being bathed in the sink.
Kate Winslet is at her best as the flaky and free spirited Clementine. She’s the kind of impulsive girl that starts a conversation with a total stranger, changes her hair color on a whim, and is more apt to write her phone number on your hand rather than on a piece of paper. Winslet makes Clementine both attractive in her playful spontaneity, and unattractive in her unreasonable outbursts.
These characters come across through the realism and uniqueness of their relationship. They have charming idiosyncrasies like taking turns suffocating each other with a pillow, and adding their own dialogue to drive in movies they watch from outside the theater.
However, this is Kaufman’s film and, in a decade where he gave us Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Adaptation, and Synecdoche New York, this film tops them all. He may not yet be cinema’s greatest writer, but he must be its most original. Here he doesn’t just give us a couple that are perfect for each other, but instead gives us a terribly screwed up relationship. Yes, they have their great times and tender moments, but they also have personality clashes and bitter arguments. The truth is these two shouldn’t be together. That it’s worth the pain to remember a relationship like this and even go through it again knowing how it will end is the beauty.
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