Quindecim

Issue date: 4/7/04 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey star in Charlie Kaufman´s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

The films of Charlie Kaufman are the exceptions that bring to light all of the rules to which most of the industry so carefully sticks. So often, a film will imagine a fantastic concept and then completely ignore all of the fascinating aspects and ramifications of that premise in order to create a dull and formulaic product. Yet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the latest edition of the original screenplays that have made Kaufman one of the most revered names in modern screenwriting, he turns every stone, stretches every angle, and peers around every corner of the plot, which is already inherently tangled. It's almost as if he does not realize he's supposed to be lazy.

In trailer-style summation, Eternal Sunshine is about a man, played by Jim Carrey, who has hired a company called Lacuna, Inc. to erase his memories of his stormy relationship with a woman, Kate Winslet. The bulk of the movie occurs in Carrey's own mind, as he suddenly reverses his decision and attempts to escape the work of the oblivious technicians.

This story echoes elements of Kaufman's best-known earlier films, 1999's Being John Malkovich, in which an office worker discovers a portal into the mind of the titular offbeat actor, and 2002's Adaptation, which featured the main character, representing Kaufman himself, writing the script as he was starring in it. In Sunshine, Carrey is consciously racing through his own psyche even as he attempts to recreate it, although of course he's unable to do that without relying on the same neural networks he's trying to outwit. The result is a beautiful cacophony, both in the writing and in the lovely and perfect visuals courtesy of manic music video director Michel Gondry.

Jim Carrey has received the most praise and attention among the cast, and he's undeniably very good. Yet it is Kate Winslet who has the most difficult task: she must play a character named Clementine, and she must play another character's memory of Clementine (which can be quite a different matter), and she must play the other character speaking to himself through Clementine. She pulls it off well, with no small credit due to her flawless American accent, which instantly reminds us upon first hearing it that we are not watching that girl from Titanic or any of the little-seen indies that followed, but instead an original character with a nicely blank slate, which is good because we're going to be doing quite a lot of scribbling and arrows and crossing-out before the lights go up.

Really, nearly everyone in the cast is a pleasant jar from our normal perspectives of the actors. Jim Carrey is a flattened Everyman of subdued humor, completely unlike any of the loud and rubbery characters that created and maintain his fame. As the receptionist of Lacuna, Inc. (and do not trust your expectations of how much impact a receptionist normally has in a film), Kirsten Dunst gets to play an actual adult woman whose youth is very nearly not an issue, or at least not a constant one. As another Lacuna employee, recovering Frodo Elijah Wood has hung up his wig and furry feet and is actually courting a girl.

I would love to discuss the ending of Eternal Sunshine in detail, but I won't, because that would be criminal. What I will say is that after spending two hours struggling to resolve one explicit debate, instead of wrapping it up and wishing us on our sated way, the film suddenly turns around and slams us with a whole new question for us to ponder alongside the characters. What kind of movie does that? Who does this movie think it is? I hate this movie the way you hate someone you know who's always just too damned cool no matter what you throw at them, which is to say that I could never really hate this movie. But do not lump Eternal Sunshine in with that genre of films that take delight in merely confusing the viewer, so that they leave knowing that it must have been brilliant or they'd know what they'd seen. This film could never have been made if everyone involved weren't completely certain that at its core, there actually was something meaningful; however, that meaning may be that we're probably better off ignoring it, letting it slip through and out of our minds like clear sunbeams.

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