Saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind over the weekend. It was enjoyable in the same way that it’s fun to “stare at a train wreck“, as Tim would say.
Don’t misunderstand, it’s difficult to argue with a movie that features a scene with Kirsten Dunst in her undies, dancing recklessly on Jim Carrey’s bed[1]. The movie is definitely unconventional, and I think it tries to be smart, but it ends up being more eye candy than brain food.
Charlie Kaufman’s projects tend to deal with things that most people have wished for at some point in time, but are pretty much the realm of fantasy/science fiction. In Being John Malkovich, it’s the ability to be someone else, to be inside their head and know what it feels like to be rich, famous, important, etc. We all know how that turns out.
Eternal Sunshine is in a similar vein, though I found its subject matter less universal. The premise is: meek, quiet, boring boy Joel (Jim Carrey) meets quirky, spontaneous, outgoing girl Clementine (Kate Winslet). They fall for each other the way they tell us that opposites attract. As the relationship progresses, it becomes apparent that their differences are too large to overcome, and they split after a heated argument. Clementine being the impulsive one, undergoes a procedure to erase all memory of Joel, in order to help her move on with life. Joel finds out shortly thereafter, and demands the same procedure out of spite. We relive his memories in reverse chronological order (Memento style) as they are being erased. As we progress toward his earlier memories from the puppy-love, infatuation phase of their relationship, Joel realizes he doesn’t want to forget Clementine and wackiness ensues as he attempts to have the procedure aborted in his drug-induced stupor.
He of course fails, and both Joel and Clementine have each other completely erased from their respective memories. Both seem to be strangely left with the feeling that they’ve lost something, but they don’t know what it is, and wouldn’t mind having it back. Thanks to the magic of Kirsten Dunst, they soon find out what happened, and are both in the uncomfortable position of listening to pre-erasure tape recordings of the other person listing their faults. Despite this, the initial spark that brought them together the first time around is back, and they entertain the thought of getting (back) together.
And there’s the rub – these tapes are like a gift from the gods, but the characters completely ignore them. Imagine that you were about to embark on something that would end up being a collossal waste of time and energy. Irrefutable evidence lands in your lap telling you that you’ve already tried once, and the outcome of your efforts was a failure. Would you try again anyway?
So what is the moral of the story then? In the case of Being John Malkovich, the point was that it doesn’t make a difference if you get to be somebody else. You’ll still be you on the inside, not that “perfect” person you’re dying to be instead. At first things will be different, but they’ll eventually regress back to the way they were. You can take the girl out of the honky-tonk, but you can’t take the honky-tonk out of the girl, as a sales guy at work says.
The point of Eternal Sunshine? There’s no point in trying to erase the memories of your past mistakes, because even if you did, you’d just go back and repeat them again? Which would almost be believable if it weren’t for those bloody tape recordings that Joel and Clementine choose to ignore. The ending would have been much more poignant if it just showed them screwing up all over again, without any knowledge that they’d done so already.
Instead, I walked out of the theatre just thinking that Joel and Clementine are such dumbasses.
[1] That, and the portrayal of Frodo Bagginses as a (clean) panty stealer is almost worth the price of admission alone. Boy, I bet that answers a lot of questions for Liv Tyler.
