Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Dir : Michael Gondry
Wr: Charlie Kaufman
Starring : Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood
Cert 15, Rt : 108 mins, USA

Fresh from writing about the varying fortunes of two brothers in Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman switches his attentions to memory erasure in the film with the week’s most interesting, some might say, pretentious title – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Don’t let the title put you off.

Plotwise, the film is set slightly in the future. Its one of those ‘what if’ comedy dramas. Here it’s a case of what if there was a firm who could painlessly erase bad memories from your past without harm? An interesting concept for sure.

Commuter Joel (Carrey) falls in love with Clementine (Winslet) the love follows its course and Joel discovers later she’s had the memory of their relationship erased. He’s miffed, did she really need to go that far? Joel then seeks out the firm, contacting the mysterious Dr Mierzwiak (Wilkinson) and his assistants (Ruffalo, Dunst and Wood) to carry out a similar deletion of her. However, whilst the ‘operation’ is in process, Joel changes his mind. Can he then through the dark recesses of his brain find a way to keep the memories of Clem out of the clutches of these zealous PC nerds ?

This is a decent romantic comedy, a great idea, nicely executed. Carrey is good – he plays this quite straight, Winslet plays Clem much as she played the younger Iris in Iris, carefree, bouncy, eccentric but lovable, a girl you believe Joel could fall for, and Tom Wilkinson is also good as the doctor. Memorable, pleasantly different from much of the fare available, well directed and with good ideas from Kaufman, following on from Being John Malkovich and the aforementioned Adaptation.

Matt Arnoldi