I'm not going to write much of a review, not because I don't have a lot to say about the movie (although I can't really articulate much of it), not to not give away the plot (because I never do that), but because I want to keep some things to myself. Owen Gleiberman says in Entertainment Weekly that the film "bends your brain and breaks your heart at the same time," and that's about as neat and eloquent a summary as I could hope to write (although I would add that it also makes you laugh as your brain bends and your heart breaks).
Despite a time-warping structure and mind-bending concept that make Memento look positively straightforward, Eternal Sunshine is memorable because of its deep yet understated emotion. Although you interpret every movie through your own filter (which is why I make such a point of letting you all know what’s going on in my life and in my head when I see a movie), I think this film more than most others will be a different movie for just about everyone who sees it. I walked out crying, but I can imagine leaving the film feeling buoyantly, goofily happy.
It’s not that Eternal Sunshine is gloomy – far from it. It’s that – at the risk of sounding like some gooey, artless hack – it’s so beautiful and true. I sort of rolled my eyes when I read Gleiberman’s closing thought in his review, that the movie makes you “fall in love with what love really is” (oh please!)… but you know what? He’s right. I can’t think of another movie right now that connects so powerfully and immediately with the heart – without even seeming to try. It’s completely unsentimental, but if you don’t always understand the relationship between Jim Carrey’s quiet, constrained Joel and Kate Winslet’s defensively quirky Clementine, you always feel it.
I’m going to stop here, because I feel myself wandering
into a thicket of inexpressible thoughts and voice-choking emotions, but
I can’t urge you strongly enough to go see this movie. As you’d expect
from a Charlie Kaufman-scripted movie, it’s
hilarious, it engages your brain (happily forcing you to figure some things
out on your own) and offers the all-too-rare joy of mulling it over for
days on end, but the real surprise is how it also entangles your heart.
The title, incidentally, comes from Alexander Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard," quoted in the movie:
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.
(Charlie Kaufman must really like this story;
"Abelard and Eloise" is the drama John Cusack performs -- à la
marionette -- in
Being John Malkovich.)
I looked up the poem online; it's chock-full of apt couplets, so I'll end
with a few of them.
Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
'Tis sure the hardest science to forget!
...
Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
How often must it love, how often hate!
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain — do all things but forget.
...
And sure, if fate some future bard shall join
In sad similitude of griefs to mine,
Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more;
Such if there be, who loves so long, so well;
Let him our sad, our tender story tell;
The well-sung woes will soothe my pensive ghost;
He best can paint 'em, who shall feel 'em most.
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