The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 278 Days to go: 270
Movie #99: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Last year, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind made it into the semifinals of Tomato Nation’s Cinemarch Madness bracket, in which voters pick the bleakest films of all time. It didn’t win, THANK GOD, but honestly I can’t believe it made it that far. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? That movie isn’t bleak. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is anything but bleak. It’s about how the people you love become part of you, and how even when you know it’s going to end, it’s absolutely crucial that you take the journey anyway. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is about the enduring hopefulness of love.
The movie starts with Joel (Jim Carrey) waking up bleary-eyed, with that groggy, confused expression that comes from a too-deep sleep that goes on too long. Usually when that happens, you go to the bathroom and shake it off with a shower, but things for Joel are just … weird. His car has a huge dent in the driver’s side. He feels out of sorts. Waiting for the train in to work, he sprints the other direction and heads out to Montauk in February — Valentine’s Day, according to his voiceover. There he sees a fascinating girl with bright blue hair (Kate Winslet) — she’s on the beach, in the diner, and eventually on the train. She introduces herself as Clementine, but please don’t make any jokes about her name. Not a problem, because Joel doesn’t know any. He doesn’t seem to have heard the name Clementine ever before, in any capacity. They’re getting off at the same stop, and Joel drives her home. They have a drink. He calls her up as soon as he gets home and wishes her a happy Valentine’s Day. They make plans to see each other the next night, when they will go up to Boston to lie on the frozen Charles River. Clementine excites Joel, makes him feel alive. He is drawn to her vivaciousness, her spontaneity, and her uniqueness. Clementine assures him they’ll be married one day.
This prologue is followed by the opening credits, in which Joel is sobbing in his car. The driver’s side is still dented, so it must be after, and yet when he goes to check his mail, his neighbor asks what Joel intends to do with Clementine for Valentine’s Day. Tomorrow. Has a year passed? The movie doesn’t say. It lets you figure it out.
With direction by Michel Gondry and a brilliant script from Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a visual and psychological masterpiece. I’ve talked before about how Alice in Wonderland creates a very successful dream sequence, but Eternal Sunshine surpasses it by a mile — multiple miles. After all, Alice in Wonderland is animated, so anything imaginable could easily be drawn into existence and put on screen. Eternal Sunshine is all live action, making it much harder to bend time and space the way they do. And they do it so well. Sets are circular and built like an Escher painting, so if Joel runs one way in his apartment, suddenly he’s back where he started and Clementine is somewhere else. If he turns around, suddenly she’s going the opposite direction. Words disappear from signs and from books. Faces become blurry and obscured. At one point, Elijah Wood’s character Patrick has no face at all, just a back of his head, no matter which way you turn him. At another, his eyes are upside-down. Voices from inside Joel’s apartment assault him from all directions, like God speaking out of the sky. Voices in the dream become slow and garbled, or echo, like they’re coming from very far away. Locations turn into other locations without warning, other locations deconstruct before your eyes like a Lego set being taken apart. Sometimes the people in the dream interact with the dreamer, sometimes they play their part without knowing the dreamer is there. Sometimes the dreamer is aware he’s dreaming, and he tries to wake himself up.
Joel has hired the services of Lacuna, Inc., you see, the erase his memories of Clementine. They met years ago and just broke up. To forget the pain of losing her, he’s opted to forget her altogether, and so Lacuna gives him a prescription sleep aid and performs a procedure during the night in which Joel revisits all the times he spent with Clementine so Lacuna can expunge them from his mind. Everything about the procedure, from Joel’s point of view, is like a dream, and it’s flawlessly executed on film to make it the most authentic dream sequence ever conceived. But relationships — even ones that end — aren’t all bad memories, and as Joel returns to each one during the night, partly aware of the men outside his head in his apartment, he realizes what’s happening, and he wants to stop it. So he takes Clementine — the one in his memories — and races to other parts of his mind to keep her from being erased. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking, all at once.
Heartbreaking, yes, but not bleak. The facts about Lacuna are exposed to former patients — including Joel and Clementine — by Mary (Kirsten Dunst), who works there. She sees the error of Lacuna’s ways and wants to set things right. Obviously Joel and Clementine, having no memory of the other or of Lacuna, are frightened and shocked and angry. Have they already done this? Have they been here before? If so, what’s the point of going forward? But Joel knows. “I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped because that’s what happens with me,” Clementine says. And Joel says, “Okay.” “Okay.” Because he accepts things might not work out, but he knows how crucial it is to go through it anyway, to have her in his life. Love — taking a chance on it — is always worth it. Always.
Kate Winslet is absolutely superb in this as the sort of Rebel With Every Cause Clementine, “just a fucked up girl, trying to find her own piece of mind.” She says that same line twice, so you know it’s something she’s rehearsed about herself — it’s a badge of honor, as well as a warning label. She’s going to be difficult; she’s going to be challenging. Sometimes (often) on purpose. That’s who she is. (“I’m Ruth-less at the moment!”) The thing is, though, she’s not wrong. I mean, sometimes she is, but so is Joel. They’re both right sometimes, and they’re both wrong sometimes. Nobody’s perfect, nobody’s the bad guy. Just like any relationship, sometimes things go well and sometimes they don’t and it’s not anybody’s fault. That’s life, and it’s still worth it.
The message, the ideal, the special effects and the structure are all exquisitely executed. It’s a fantasy, obviously, but still entirely authentic. I mean, if there were such a service as to have your memory erased, people would absolutely do it for profit, and other people would absolutely pay to have it done. The techs would no doubt rifle through your things and drink your booze and have sex on your chair. Some creepy guy would totally use someone’s forgotten memories to manipulate and prey on women. All of that, in that world, is entirely plausible — more than that, it’s probable. So the movie doesn’t just tell an interesting story, it poses a fascinating question. It makes you think about your own heart, your own memories, your own sorrows. Would you erase them?
I’ve been hurt a lot of times in my life — so has everybody — but who you love becomes a part of who you are. To erase them would be to erase a piece of yourself — to deny your existence. I would never want to do that.
“Meet me in Montauk.”
Viable Option 