eternal sunshine de l'mind spotless..

[Weird. Oh]

another thing i noticed this time around: there are a lot of thematic similarities between this and Vanilla Sky, which is interesting considering the intense hatred/love for the two.

I noticed this too when I saw it. Some scenes actually reminded me of VS. Like when Joel took the pill to knock himself out for the procedure. Which I believe Tom cruise's character did too. Also, in Eternal Sunshine when they were in Joel's mind some of the people didn't have faces which was similar to VS.

[Gold Trumpet]

Stanley Kauffmann finally reviewed and loved it. (Its worth noting he hated Being John Malkovich and Adaptation) I agree with him on the filmmaking excellence and should have opined more on it myself, but I wasn't as impressed with the story surrounding it as he was:

THE MANUFACTURED DREAM

The title of Michel Gondry's film is a clear signal. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind announces that this picture means to be both eccentric and important. A second signal is more subtle. The film's first shot is of a man sleeping, waking, getting up. Ordinary enough. Why, then, is the camera trembling? Why did the director use a handheld camera for this commonplace start? The film that follows is an explanation, and something more.  

A third signal in Eternal Sunshine, even odder, is that, after the first two hints of strangeness, the story does not begin strangely. The oldest Hollywood plot blueprint is boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, and Eternal Sunshine is so obedient to the first part of that blueprint that it is baffling. Why have we had those two odd opening signals? The screenplay is by Charlie Kaufman, known for his bizarre ideas: Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, both praised by others, were certainly offbeat. Not here, in the beginning. But just as we start to wonder if Kaufman has succumbed to convention, his screenplay lurches off the well-worn road.

A thirtyish man named Joel lives on Long Island and commutes to a job in Manhattan. One day, moody because of woman troubles, he unexpectedly bolts from the station platform where he is waiting for his New York-bound train and scoots over to the other platform for a train headed to Montauk, on the eastern end of Long Island. On the lonely wintry Montauk beach he sees a young woman walking past him. They do not speak, but soon they encounter each other accidentally in a diner, on the station platform, and on the otherwise empty return train. We can almost hear the plot needles clicking, especially since the dialogue is 1930s-cute, spiced with mod candor. Her name, we learn, is Clementine. She and Joel hit it off very well, with the requisite flurries of hesitation. We follow them rapidly through a considerable period of intimacy, but the 1930s formula gets a jolt. By the time the film's opening titles appear, they are breaking up. No terrible quarrel, they are just breaking up.

Thus the boy-meets-girl Part One of the pattern is quickly hemstitched, and Part Two begins. So do Joel's troubles. He has not forgotten Clementine, but she has completely forgotten him--scientifically. Clementine has had all knowledge of Joel erased from her mind by a new electronic procedure: when he and she meet one day in the bookshop where she works, she treats him cordially enough, but unfamiliarly.

Kaufman's story now zooms into science fiction as we learn about Dr. Howard Mierzwiak, a brain specialist who has perfected a system of mental erasure. The doctor advises the unhappy Joel to erase his memories of Clementine: then all will be well, or at least even. With the doctor's new process, he will induce Joel's mind to revisit all his experiences of Clementine and annul them one by one. Desperate, curious, Joel agrees.

Part Two is, for the most part, the Clementine-erasure in Joel's brain, and it is here that the film becomes its true self. From this point until the finish, most of Eternal Sunshine exists inside Joel's head, in the nebulous, the evanescent, the scary blendings, the ludicrous reversals, the anxieties, the wish fulfillments of dreams. Joel revisits snatches of his life with Clementine in somewhat distorted form, as the doctor's process is rubbing her out of his mind. He is with her in the bookshop, and suddenly she vanishes from the shot; objects multiply and disappear; places crowd in and whip away; a house that they visit collapses around them; fantasies materialize--suddenly he and she find themselves in a large double bed right on that wintry Montauk beach.  

Very often films have attempted to portray dreams, and usually they fail because they are simply narratives or sets of symbols shown in soft focus and willowy images. Eternal Sunshine has the only dream sequence I know that convinces, if one can call the results of the doctor's process a dream. At any rate it is something like traversing a kaleidoscopic nightmare.

Here we come to Michel Gondry. He is a Frenchman who made his reputation with music videos and has directed a few feature films in the United States. He worked with Kaufman and Pierre Bismuth on the original story for the picture, and though Kaufman alone wrote the final screenplay, it is hard to believe that a writer forecast on a word processor every visual nuance and light storm in the dream sequence. The whole long passage is something like a cadenza in an early concerto--the composer prepared the way for the soloist, who then took over on his own. Gondry's virtuosity lifts the film far past science fiction into cinematic efflorescence. He shows us, more seductively than other directors have done, how freehand use of film can capture the flashes in our minds that slip between words.

At the last Joel tries to retain fragments of his Clementine memories, as the doctor and his assistants strive otherwise. In any event--after many mental events--Part Three begins back where the film began. Joel wakes up again in that opening shot, and now we know why the camera is handheld. He is trembly after having been through that dream, that cerebral hegira. But when did he dream? Before the film began? This makes us wonder whether the whole film, including the opening "reality," is oneiric. Gondry and Kaufman do not say: they do not resolve anything. They seem to imply that the quintessence of life is non-resolution between the insides of our heads and the world around us. The film ends with Joel and Clementine dreamily reunited, walking away from us down that wintry Montauk beach until they disappear and the screen is sheer white.

Gondry's filmic dazzle is greatly aided by Ellen Kuras's cinematography--something like the work that Sven Nykvist did for Bergman--and the superb editing by Valdís Óskarsdóttir. But Gondry, contrary to what we might expect from a cinematic virtuoso, is a knowing director of actors. Kate Winslet plays Clementine, and it is breathtaking to see the woman who was the young Murdoch in Iris and Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility giving body to this light-comedy figure. Claudette Colbert and Irene Dunne used to do it in the 1930s: Winslet, with American accent, equals them here.

Then there is Jim Carrey as Joel. Has his frame been overtaken by another spirit? The unbearable smart-ass of his first films has given way to an actor of some depth, some sorrow, some hunger for verity. Carrey sent signs of this change in The Truman Show and The Majestic. Here there is no gram of self-display: he wants only to burrow into the moment. It would be a sound performance by any actor; it is all the more laudable in a former nuisance.

Three other characters wind through the story--or around it. The doctor has three assistants, two men and a pert female blonde whose activities add variety to the proceedings. The blonde is in love with the doctor, but the tactical reason for her presence is to help anchor the film's title. It is a line from Alexander Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard": she quotes it to the doctor, and, by jiminy, he knows it too. Then they move toward sex. But the trouble with the line as title of the picture is that it has only a very tenuous relation to the story. Besides, those who happen to know the poem will also know that, far from a lover's murmur, it is spoken by a nun in praise of her chastity

[pete]

haha he calls handheld camera "trembling."

[cine]

Carrey sent signs of this change in The Truman Show and The Majestic.

Alright, seriously.. why is there never any mention of Man on the Moon with these two titles?

[matt35mm]

I agree: Man on the Moon had such a great performance from Carrey.  I really like The Truman Show and how Carrey was able to tone things down to generate some real power.  The Majestic was okay, as I remember it, not terrible, but not great.  I don't really hold that against Carrey, though; I thought he did well.

Man on the Moon, however, was his breakthrough performance, for me anyway.  His performance in Eternal Sunshine was great, but not a revelation, because I already saw that genius in Man on the Moon.  In Eternal Sunshine, he's just continuing to show himself as actually a very fine actor.  I wouldn't be surprised if, 10 years from now, I think of Jim Carrey as one of our best actors.

(It does have to do with his likeablity, though.  There are people who just don't like him.  But I like him so much, that when he does tone things down like in The Truman Show, it generates a lot of power and sympathy just because I like him so much.  A single shot of him standing still could make me go, "Wow."  That's just the magnetism of Jim Carrey for me.  His performance in Eternal Sunshine is him more "actively acting" than in The Truman Show, and it's pretty damned powerful.)

To sum up: Jim Carrey could flail his limbs and make me laugh, and then he can make a puppy dog-face and make me cry.  He kicks ass.

[sickfins]

constant errors make sickfins sad

eternal sunshine of a spotless mind
eternal sunshine on the spotless mind
eternal sunshine for the spotless mind
eternal sunshine in the spotless mind
eternal sunshine in a spotless mind

[Chest Rockwell]

So, what? Now suddenly GT likes the filmaking?

[Gold Trumpet]

So, what? Now suddenly GT likes the filmaking?

Even in my original review, I did. Its just my appreciation of the filmmaking was reduced to a sentence mentioning how the filmmaking successfully jolted us with the couple, experiencing their highs and lows. I should have been more complementary to at least that

[mutinyco]

In the immortal words of Butt-head: "Uh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh..."

[Tictacbk]

Yea so i finally saw it again.  If you haven't seen it a second time I highly suggest it.  Even though there isn't much more to pick up on during the second viewing, it just puts you in a trance for two hours. What a fabulous movie this is, i'm still on my high from it.  Although it does make you feel a bit lonely...



Oh, and Jon Brion is a genius.

[Alethia]

ahaha, oh my god this movie was good, this movie was sooooo goooodddd

[Ernie]

ahaha, oh my god this movie was good, this movie was sooooo goooodddd

Finally man. I've been waiting for you to say something. I was hoping you'd like it.

[RegularKarate]

Ugh... I'm so glad I finally got to see this movie, I was having trouble avoiding this thread (and not doing a very good job of it).

Most has been said,  It's boring to reply just to agree, so I'll add something I don't think has been said.

I've heard people complain that they "Figured out" the "twist" at the end too soon in the film.  Well, I'm sorry, but this was completely spelled right out for you and isn't really a "twist".

***SPOILER***
I'm talking about the fact that the beginning is the end

Anyway, that's one thing that I really liked about this film is that it didn't take too much time to play in it's cleverness.  It was just a great film and kept fresh throughout.  I'm all for Gondry taking Spike's place as the Kaufman filmmaker (We'll forgive Human Nature).

This film also further shows the Kaufman/Philip K. Dick similarities.  You can really see the PKD influence in his work.  Some mentioned Vanilla Sky... well VS (that piece of shit), was a remake of Abre los ojos which is a fancy rippoff of Ubik by PKD.  Fun stuff.

[Alethia]

ahaha, oh my god this movie was good, this movie was sooooo goooodddd

Finally man. I've been waiting for you to say something. I was hoping you'd like it.

lol, yeah i was a little late to see this, but thank God I finally did, ive been all giddy and shit ever since

[Kal]

what the fuck is wrong with the theatres they only put like 4-5 showings a day of this movie against 20 of The Passion... how the hell do they expect it to make good at the BO