An incredibly topsy-turvy trek through the mind of a person who wishes to hold onto the memories of a past romance.
Depending on the nature of a memory, recalling it can either give you the sensation of floating like a feather on water, or make you feel like your lungs are filling up with tears. But even those horribly painful memories which condemn you to hours of introspection and wondering “what if…?” make a person who they are. One would be tempted to erase them to ease this dreadful pain, but such a scenario would damn that person to make the same mistakes over and over again. Bad memories are the closest thing to hindsight we have.
Let’s face it, painful experiences and bad memories are character development. When was the last time you came across a character – in a film or in person – who’s a walking ray of sunshine and actually believed that’s all to them? Something traumatic is always laying underneath the surface. I’m getting wildly off the point here again, so let’s steer this introduction into the body of this review. Do these damn things even amount to reviews? That’s an argument for another time.
For many months have I wanted to watch Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (2004), purely based off of the title too. I mean, how the hell could I not be intrigued by the myriad of connotations I could take away from it, alongside the fact that it’s penned by Charlie Kauffman. Yesterday, on a hot Monday night in March, I finally watched it, and sweet Jesus is it a strange and bizarrely beguiling film. A straight-jacketed Jim Carrey plays an introverted and pusillanimous guy who goes by Joel and his extroverted and eccentric Clementine, who’s head look like the nib of a highlighter pen, break up. Clementine erases all memory of Joel, and in keeping with an eye for an eye, so does Joel. As the memory doctors root around in his brain, slowly erasing all memory of her, Joel realises that he wants to hold on to her and hence a strange pursuit through his mind ensues, him trying to hide her in different parts of his mind. Like all of Kaufman’s scripts, this is bewilderingly strange and head-scratchingly surreal, flinging me through these preternatural worlds – in this case, Joel’s mind – where logic and proportion has keeled over and died. It does so in such a way that doesn’t detract from the emotions that he’s feeling and trying desperately to preserve. The emotions themselves are the weirdness.
The story unfolds in a jumbled-up sort of manner which doesn’t seem confused, but calculated in its non-linearity and once you get far enough into it, you see where it all connects into a loop of pre-destination. As Joel goes to get his memory wiped, the chase through his brain takes him backwards through his relationship, from the disastrous last time he saw her to the very first intimate moment of freedom. Joel is obviously very confused as he is caught in the midst of multiple ontological realities, witnessing himself having his memories removed, living through his own memories with full hindsight, and running from one instance to the next. I’d be willing to call it magical realism, if these occurrences weren’t completely plausible and redolent of the workings of the mind. Eventually when he wakes up with his memories removed, the beginning of the film replays itself, almost suggesting that Joel and Clementine have been going round and round in circles.
Talking purely about the camera just won’t cut it, the whole mise-en-scéne is madness. The way the camera jerks and moves through his twisting interiority is panic-inducing and urgent. The handheld camera movements coupled with the bright spotlight denoting the memory doctors coming after all traces of Clementine, like a swarm of wild bees, is invasive to say the bloody least. The entire diegesis is upside down, everything breathing and warping into each other, sets falling apart, everything turning white as the memories are slowly wiped, like the whole of existence fading into nothingness. Which is exactly what is happening, this inner universe which is walled off in his mind is suffering from a profound collapse and he’s caught right in the middle of it, witnessing the final disorderly moments of it. When I did find myself seeing through Joel’s eyes, the happier moments of their relationship, the camera stops thrashing around and is more sedated with love. The set isn’t claustrophobic or grim, but more open, dream-like and colourful. It is the true expression of carefree love, unaware of its impending doom.
Scored against this crumbling reality is an instrumentally dense and weird musical score which almost sounds like the lingering whispered of other memories that are threatening to drag the current one into a spiralling tangent. My ears were played around and stretched with to keep up with the score, but so were my eyes with the frame.
What drew me to this film is how straight-jacketed Jim Carrey is, locked inside the confines of Joel and prohibited from exploding out in his usual physical anarchy. This very reserved and stripped-down performance is beautiful and highly awkward, channelling the character with timidity. When he does get a chance to flail around and fight the forces that are set upon him, his physicality isn’t allowed to be comedic. It just doesn’t fit, it’s earnest instead. Led by the ameliorative tendencies of the narrative, this restriction ultimately became freedom. Kate Winslet as Clementine, on the other hand, exudes the sort of extroverted chaos that Jim Carrey is usually remembered by, which feels like a tease, the sort to remind us that this is not the usual Jim Carrey we’re used to. This whole charade starts from the very outset with the grim colour palette and his distanced expressions.
Regardless of what you think of the ending, it’s a sort of bitter-sweet affair. Love is framed as something corrupting and senselessly endless. Is it worth reliving the blissful memories despite the fact that things will turn ugly afterwards? They go round and round in circles, losing their memory, and holding onto a tiny shred of it each time which compels them back to one another. But it’s this miniscule shred which holds the entire essence of their relationship, this tiny shred is what makes them do things differently each time, becoming better for each other. I don’t know about you but this groundhog-day sort of romantic situation is quite sweet.
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