oel (Carrey) awakes in his New York apartment on a gray Valentine's Day. On his way to work, he impulsively switches trains, heading instead to the beach at Montauk, not sure why.
Only one other person, a woman with blue hair, wanders the snow-covered beach. On the train back to town, she introduces herself: Clementine (Winslet). "I'm a vindictive little bitch, truth be told," she volunteers to the squirmy Joel. Later, she yells at him over a disagreement, then slugs him in the arm, then apologizes. "Sorry if I come off kind of nutso. I'm really not," she says.
At the end of the day, the two find themselves sharing a drink in Clementine's apartment. She wants him to stay, but something pulls him away. But he calls her, intrigued. The next night, she impulsively drags him out onto a frozen lake. Fearful, he follows her onto the ice, where they lie, head to head, staring at the stars, hand in hand.
Jump to Joel crying in his car. He has just broken up with someone. It's Clementine. At a friend's apartment, he finds a card from Lacuna Corp. It says that Clementine has undergone a medical procedure to erase all memories of Joel and their life together. It asks that she not be contacted.
Panicked, Joel tracks Clementine down at the bookstore where she works. She acts as if she has no memory of him.
Joel finds Lacuna Corp. It looks like a dentist's office in a rundown building. The chirpy receptionist, Mary (Dunst), tells Joel that Valentine's Day is their busiest time. Dr. Howard Mierzwak (Wilkinson) agrees to Joel's request to wipe his memory of Clementine.
The process is to take place in Joel's apartment. Patrick (Wood) and Stan (Ruffalo), Dr. Mierzwak's assistants, arrive with a pile of equipment. Joel lies back in his bed, headset attached, and lapses into a dream state, where his memories of his life with Clementine unspool, backward, as they are systematically destroyed.
As dazzling as the sun itself
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (the title is from a poem by Alexander Pope) comes from the febrile imagination of Oscar-nominated screenwriter Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) and is as close as he is likely to come to a romantic comedy. That's like saying Titanic is a movie about a boat trip.
As in his other films, Kaufman gleefully throws out the rule book with Eternal Sunshine and sets out to tell the relatively simple story of a man and his tempestuous love affair with a free-spirited woman in about the weirdest way possible. In the hands of edgy visual stylist Gondry (the French-born director best known for music videos for the White Stripes and other bands), the resulting movie dazzles in its originality, mixing pain and pathos with quicksilver wit and artful imagery. It's like the sun breaking through the clouds on a wintry day.
Kaufman again demonstrates that he's a master storyteller, able to turn narrative conventions on their head. Eternal Sunshine begins at its end, and the narrative literally turns itself inside out, upside down and backwards. The effect, as T.S. Eliot said, is to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. We are along for the ride as Joel both relives his tempest-tossed relationship with Clementine and comments on it from a remove, all while it dissolves around us like a dream running in reverse.
Gondry, who collaborated previously with Kaufman on Human Nature, shows that he is up to the task of bringing Kaufman's challenging ideas to life. Rather than going for the easy computer-animated effects, Gondry chooses instead for a low-tech approach—at one point, he had Carrey running behind the camera to play himself as Joel and Joel's double. In other scenes, Gondry morphs the world in disquieting ways around his actors. The result is gritty and disorienting and real, the way a memory really feels, or would if we were Charlie Kaufman and living inside his head.
Giving an emotional center to these fantastical images, Carrey and Winslet offer their best performances ever. Carrey, playing the uncharacteristic straight man, shows none of the tics audiences have become used to, but rather fully embodies Joel as a living, breathing, aching Everyman. Winslet, taking on a brash American accent, transforms into Clementine with such empathy that she imbues what could otherwise be an off-putting harpy with great warmth. And the two light up the screen with their chemistry. A masterful supporting cast matches their every step.
