Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Reviewed by:
Paul Ulane

Breaking up’s a bitch. But rather than blocking out the painful past with three bottles of Jägermeister and some horse tranquilizers, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind suggests a new approach. Girlfriend, boyfriend, hot sister-in-law—just delete them from your memory! When Joel (Jim Carrey) discovers his girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet), has undergone this scientific process to flush him from her mind, he heads to the same clinic in order to vaporize his own memories. But as two lab-rat geeks (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) work over Joel’s brain, he changes his mind—and we spend the rest of the movie inside his psyche trying to hold on to Clementine. Throughout his amusing, repressed, and crumbling memories, Carrey kept us in our seat by not once slipping back into Bruce Almighty hamming, and the rest of the cast, including David Cross and Kirsten Dunst, fit perfectly into their respective roles. Adaptation screenwriter Charlie Kaufman proves that he’s mastered the mind-fuck, and applying it to a love story doesn’t soften the blow. While Sunshine won’t erase memories of your ex, it’ll at least expunge any remnants of The Majestic.

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