Review of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) by Andrew M — 22 Mar 2014

Sincerest thanks, Kaufman, sincerest thanks. At first it seems like it's going to be a less solipsistic "Punch-Drunk Love" as Carrey greets us with his taciturn, passive, inept self, but no, it's a different tale. His role is explicated by his own line, "Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating." He and the uniquely gregarious yet equally impulsive Winslet team up in this introspectively trippy story of technologically "cheating" life to better the remainder; but one thing's for certain: one cannot escape fate. It's jumping into an authentic human brain Kaufman-style as the memories of their relationship are perused reverse-chronologically. It inspires audience members with its statement that the imagination is an intangibly ethereal art that can accomplish anything the beholder wishes. It's scary, hilarious, lachrymose, and bewildering, all in good taste. The incredible irony towards the end where the procedure that originally meant they'd never meet again IS EXACTLY what reunites the pair, inciting the realization of what qualities fused them in the beginning. The Dunst/Ruffalo/Wilkinson/Frodo real-time business serves as a diverting yet fresh parallel to the main plot. Murders Malkovich, easier to follow than Synecdoche, and awfully comparable to Adaptation (still undecided which of the two is my favorite). It screams, "Cherish life for its strengths and weaknesses, for its happy and sad" but most importantly, there's someone for everyone, someone that uproots happiness in you. A brilliantly whimsical and off-the-charts seamless history storybook.

---.

Revisiting something, anything, written by yourself years later is a mortifying experience. It is mortifying because not of the haphazard verbiage or the syntactical misfires, but rather the categorical admission that your gleanings are somewhat the same yet you've done nothing about it. You read the book but never took notes, the adage might go. What's the point of reading or watching or listening or talking if there's no subsequent progress? Empty carbs they seem, to me.

This time around (and not last time) Kaufman did teach me that, like in love, his picture's centerpiece, your mind will find ways to "hate" what it loves. And it is our job to actualize that "hate" is merely just that -- in scare quotes.