Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind served as my introduction to screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Beloved by cinephiles, I have long been ready to catch up with this esteemed filmmaker’s work. Add to that the heartrending premise of this film, and I assumed I would be in for a treat. As it turns out, this was a classic example of a movie that I appreciated more than I enjoyed.
This story focuses on Joel (Jim Carrey), a depressed, lonely introvert who leads a very mundane life. One day, on a whim, he takes the train to Montauk instead of work. There he meets Clementine (Kate Winslet) a free-spirited, kooky, extrovert with blue hair who, for some reason, he immediately feels a connection with. Through flashbacks, moviegoers discover these two …show more content…
Most of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind takes place inside the mind of Carey’s Joel as he is having Clementine erased from his memory. Thus, audiences experience this relationship in reverse chronological order, beginning with the end and ending with the beginning. This idea of having a movie take place almost entirely in memories is fascinating in and of itself, and the screenplay executes it perfectly. It does take viewers awhile to figure out what is happening, but once they do the film becomes an enthralling intellectual …show more content…
The acting is impressive, the screenplay structurally fascinating, and the directing technically astute. Nevertheless, at least partly because of the movie itself, I could not engage with the emotional heart of the story, a definite weakness of any film. I did feel some twinges of emotion (“why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?”), but they were clearly not as powerful as they were supposed to be. As such Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind represents a movie that intrigued my brain but not my
This story focuses on Joel (Jim Carrey), a depressed, lonely introvert who leads a very mundane life. One day, on a whim, he takes the train to Montauk instead of work. There he meets Clementine (Kate Winslet) a free-spirited, kooky, extrovert with blue hair who, for some reason, he immediately feels a connection with. Through flashbacks, moviegoers discover these two …show more content…
Most of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind takes place inside the mind of Carey’s Joel as he is having Clementine erased from his memory. Thus, audiences experience this relationship in reverse chronological order, beginning with the end and ending with the beginning. This idea of having a movie take place almost entirely in memories is fascinating in and of itself, and the screenplay executes it perfectly. It does take viewers awhile to figure out what is happening, but once they do the film becomes an enthralling intellectual …show more content…
The acting is impressive, the screenplay structurally fascinating, and the directing technically astute. Nevertheless, at least partly because of the movie itself, I could not engage with the emotional heart of the story, a definite weakness of any film. I did feel some twinges of emotion (“why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?”), but they were clearly not as powerful as they were supposed to be. As such Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind represents a movie that intrigued my brain but not my