Silly Michel Gondry.

Director: Michel Gondry
Starring: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson
Running Time: 108 min.
Rated R for language, some drug and sexual content
4.5 out of 5 stars

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is, in many ways, a film that defies classification. It could be described as a romantic comedy, but the comedy is subtle and serious—and besides that, it’s far too honest about human relationships to appeal to the usual thirteen-year-old-girl crowd. It’s got a pretty good dose of science fiction in it, but it’s too mundane in its science to attract a lot of Trekkies. I guess you could maybe call it an “art film”—you know, the kind of movie your Birkentsock-wearing friends go to to prove they’re smarter than you. (I’m not sure that’s really a genre in the traditional sense, but you could say it functions as a de facto genre of sorts.) The good news is that while Eternal Sunshine does have a hefty dose of pretension, it more than earns it—through well-developed characters, a weird sense of humor, and an uncompromisingly honest view of reality. If you’re able to accept its fragmented storytelling and visual flourish (which may be a little too idiosyncratic for some), you won’t be disappointed.

Eternal Sunshine stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as a romantic couple whose relationship has recently ended. Joel (Carrey) wants to make amends, but when he goes to see Clementine (Winslet), she doesn’t even seem recognize him. It turns out she’s undergone an experimental neurological procedure to erase every memory of their relationship from her mind. Not to be outdone, Joel decides to submit to the same procedure. The majority of the film is taken up by the procedure itself, which Dr. Mierzwiak’s (Tom Wilkinson) team performs on Joel as he sleeps. During this time, the audience is privy to the dreams Joel experiences, and we see his and Clementine’s relationship in reverse, beginning with their breakup and ending with the day they met. The film borrows as much as you might expect from Memento and Being John Malkovich, but unlike Memento, it has a heart; and unlike Being John Malkovich, it has a brain. Sunshine’s central concern is the sad state of romantic relationships, in which people are kept around as long as they fulfill the usual physical and emotional needs, and then thrown out with yesterday’s trash the moment they fail to do so. It is impossible to watch it without considering how different it is from the usual romantic comedy, which almost always ends with the two leads beginning a romantic relationship of some sort, with nary a thought to the difficulties they might have down the road. Sunshine ably stands that paradigm on its head, beginning with the difficulties and ending with the idealized beginning—and finally concluding that the relationship was worth something, despite the characters’ shortfalls.

This isn’t sentimentality, however; this is a serious look at people’s failures and how they make relationships go sour. Carrey goes directly against his usual persona here, playing a shy, sad-sack sort who’s afraid to open up; Winslet is a flamboyant but unambitious stoner, narcissistic in her nihilism. These are real human characters, who fall for each other despite these qualities, and are then driven apart by them. Carrey proves here that he’s not just a goofy comedian—he really is a brilliant actor, provided he’s paired with a director who will take him seriously. Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, and Kirsten Dunst all perform admirably in their bit roles as well, but the most impressive thing about this film are the special effects, which former the music video director Gondry works into the film beautifully. In this context, however, special effects actually mean something. Joel’s subconscious comes alive for the audience as he submits to the procedure, and—later—has second thoughts and tries to stop it.

Fans of 1950s-era Japanese cinema (yeah, all three of you out there) will remember Yasujiro Ozu’s masterpiece Tokyo Story, which ends with a brutally honest discourse in which one character asks another, “Isn’t life disappointing?” Smiling sympathetically, the other responds, “Yes. It is.” Eternal Sunshine ends on a similar note, with the characters looking each other’s failures in the face, and resolving to forgive them and move on. The only way to find happiness is to sacrifice your own for the sake of another’s. What a strange world—and yet, here it is.