Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (2004) directed by Michel Gondry was a tremendous battle for memory of a loved one. Jim Carrey as Joel Barish, and Kate Winslet as Clementine Kruczynski were an amazing mix for presenting a relationship that is falling apart, but how they still want to fight for each other while they lose parts of their lives. This may sound strange and confusing, believe me, I felt the same when I started watching this.
When watching this, I found it rather creepy at first with Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) kind of like a stalker to Joel Barish (Jim Carrey), but as the film goes on, I couldn’t help but feel as though her character is sweet. We see Joel start with a bizarre and questionable beginning when he meets Clementine, then this cuts to another time period when they have clearly had some conflict. The next day, we see that Clementine doesn’t recognise Joel then kisses another man, later to find that she has erased her memory of Joel, leaving him heartbroken and following the same footsteps. I found this to be very bizarre, yet strangely interesting, where I found myself wanting to help Joel when he realises that he doesn’t want to go through the procedure while in the middle of forgetting Clementine.
Confused yet? Well, I found this to be mysterious, also this gave me the question of ‘how will Joel keep his memories?’ It seems futile to resist, yet he is desperate to keep Clementine in his life, this reminds me of the game Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days where memories are ‘key’ for keeping people in your life, and the mention of how painful it is to lose those people around you. I know, I know, cringey and maybe cliché, however, I find these sorts of narratives most interesting to me, where the mental battles come into play. Michel Gondry (in my opinion) has done very well with filming, especially in certain questionable memories of Joel’s.
In my opinion, the lighting with cinematics and colours were fine in certain places and then some done not as well. As a few scenes have a stationary shot and some panning, until we see Joel walking in the dark with a spotlight on him with uncomfortable feeling of less personal space. Of course, this could have been done symbolically, but the darkness was contrasting too much with the well-lit faces. We can see the expressions clearly on their faces, as well as the settings all being established in different shots, where I and the characters were trying to recognise what memory/place were they in. Although, one scene, which I adore is the iced lake, where Joel and Clementine are dressed in the stereotypical Christmas winter coats, the blues of the ice with the darkness of the night contrast but in an attractive way, maybe even a fantasy sort of way. There are certain memories with warm colours and cooler colours for settings, which tells me and the audience what the characters might be feeling.
The sound is interesting as there are background noises of streets, with the key sounds of the conversations at the right tones. Also, the music was tense at parts when it was necessary, but not overused, although I found that the beginning should have some sort of introduction music instead of just a voice over of Joel’s thought process, even though this is good, as I could follow his thoughts and who he was. However, his intentions aren’t quite explained fully, as the thoughts were too vague and did not explain why the actions were happening. Of course, this is all brought up to a conclusion at the end, which might have been good to remind Michel Gondry to explain the scene a bit earlier.
Jim Carrey’s acting is usually too wacky and strange for my liking, however, this new character to me was more serious, yet still had it’s comedic side. I found that the acting was appropriate for the nervous style character and yet there’s a desperate side to this character, presented in such a way that I felt sorry for this fictional character, and I shed a tear. You don’t believe me? Well, try and remember to check out this film so you can see why.
Kate Winslet was completely different to the usual films I see her in, like the film Sense and Sensibility (1995), as she has a very high-class style and a ‘posh’ accent, which was a surprise to me to hear a change in her voice. Although, I don’t quite think that the dyed blue hair works for her, something about it makes me feel like she is trying to be a teenager or in a rebellious sort of style, since that’s the stereotype. Ignoring the blue hair, the orange dyed hair works more for a certain look of age in my opinion, making her look younger. I guess you could also say more fun looking to be around? She keeps a constant character of Clementine, which felt very sweet to Joel, where she (as well as Jim Carrey) then presented a relationship falling apart, then moving onto the attempts of fixing the mess that they have of a relationship.
I found that the other characters, Mary Svevo (Kirsten Dunset), Stan (Mark Ruffalo), Patrick Wertz (Elijah Wood) and Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) were still important to drive the narrative, as they brought the invention of erasing people’s minds, making sure the procedure was successful and seen through. The acting was interesting, although I found Elijah Wood’s acting to be rather wimpy compared to Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003), and Frodo wasn’t hero material either.
Overall, I found this film to be very enjoyable to watch, but remember, you should watch the film and see for yourself, of what a confusing but intriguing narrative this is by Michel Gondry. You can watch it and dislike it, but then you’ve clearly forgotten what you love about it, so watch it again and see more of Jim Carrey’s and Kate Winslet’s characters, and how there is a mental battle going on.
Jack's film reviews co 