“Eternal Sunshine” is one of the best films I’ve ever seen about trying to get back together after a bad breakup. I found Jim Carrey as the shy Joel and Kate Winslet as the free-spirited Clementine to be very appealing romantic leads. But as Shakespeare reminds us, “the course of true love never did run smooth,” and I would characterize the overall tone of “Eternal Sunshine” as bittersweet.
I enjoyed the film’s fanciful premise that there’s a procedure which can expunge memories of a former lover. First Clementine has the procedure performed on her, then a brokenhearted Joel arranges to have it done on him too. But midway through the procedure, the unconscious Joel realizes he wants to hang onto his memories of Clementine, and the movie shows us the dreamscape inside his head as he tries to avoid the erasure.
Lacuna Inc., the company that performs the memory erasures, seems to me to be a pretty goofy outfit. The Lacuna staff is played by Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, and Elijah Wood, and while Joel is undergoing the medical procedure, Dunst’s and Ruffalo’s characters dance in their underwear. Lacuna is headed by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), who tells Joel, “Technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage, but it’s on a par with a night of heavy drinking.”
“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is not a conventional film, and I think it defies easy categorization. It’s neither a silly Jim Carrey comedy nor a standard guy-meets-girl tale. The Internet Movie Database classifies it in terms of genre as “drama/romance/sci-fi/comedy.” As for me, I would call it a romantic comedy because it tells a love story, is witty, and has a happy ending.
The screenplay is another of Charlie Kaufman’s creations featuring scrambled chronology, neurotic characters, and dreamlike sequences, but I don’t think there’s anything esoteric about the movie. In my view, “Eternal Sunshine” is mainstream, as opposed to art-house, fare. I think French-born director Michel Gondry, whose background is mostly in commercials and music videos, brought a visual style that is well-suited to Kaufman’s screenplay.
The “Eternal Sunshine” DVD provides a feature-length audio track where director Michel Gondry and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman comment on their film, and although they make a few worthwhile remarks, I got quickly bored.
My favorite bonus material on the DVD is where Jim Carrey has a 15-minute conversation about the movie with Gondry. There’s some wacky unused footage of a pajama-clad Carrey driving around in a bed propelled by a Volkswagen engine. Also, Carrey talks about a time when he got angry with the director for working them so hard that Kate Winslet fainted while shooting a scene in a tub of water.
The DVD also contains a 34-second faux TV commercial where Tom Wilkinson pitches Lacuna that I found to be hilarious.
I thought the remaining bonus materials on the DVD were workaday. Below I’ve listed all the DVD’s special features, although I believe they only marginally enhance the enjoyment of the feature film.
But “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” makes a good DVD movie because it’s worth watching more than once, and if you’re in the mood for a slightly unconventional love story that’s entertaining and accessible, I highly recommend it.
DVD Details:
- Run Time: 1 hour 47 minutes
- MPAA Rating: R for language, some drug and sexual content
- Release Date: September 28, 2004
- Anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1), Color
- English Dolby Digital 5.1
- English DTS 5.1
- French Dolby Digital 5.1
- English Captions for the Hearing Impaired
- Spanish Subtitles
- French Subtitles
- Feature-Length Audio Commentary by Director and Screenwriter
- A Look Inside “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (11 min.)
- A Conversation With Jim Carrey and Michel Gondry (15 min.)
- Deleted Scenes (7 min.)
- Polyphonic Spree “Light & Day” Music Video (3 min. 3 sec.)
- Lacuna Commercial (34 sec.)
