Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [R] [2004]
Overall movie: ****
EJW content: A supporting character, but an intriguing and important one (and one you'll probably want to smack some sense into).
This movie is what happens when you take a more-or-less familiar love story and a passel of good actors and throw them into a Charlie Kaufman script with Michel Gondry's directing. Oh, you also need a science-fictional premise to tie it all together and give us a way inside the main character's mind. I wouldn't call it the best movie in ten years, as one reviewer did, but it's certainly head and shoulders above most of what's out there. You could say this is a romantic comedy (although the comedy's rather dark) that's had its clothes ripped off so we can see what's concealed beneath - psychologically, that is.
The leads are Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, both playing wonderfully against type. Besides Elijah, supporting roles are filled by Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson, and Kirsten Dunst. As usual in these comments, I'm not going to say much about the plot. In fact, I think knowing too much about the story in advance dulled its impact on me somewhat, so I'll try not to pass that along. There are a couple of unexpected twists toward the end that I hadn't read about in any reviews or heard discussed in any interviews.
This movie has some similarities to Chain of Fools, although ESOTSM is less comedic and much more focused, and most of its surreal quality comes from what we see while inside the main character's (Carrey's) mind rather than bringing it out into the "real world" the way Chain of Fools does. The surreal moments/scenes in ESOTSM are creatively conceived and marvelously visualized. Also somewhat like Chain of Fools, scenes in ESOTSM don't always make sense when you first see them, but by the end everything connects; the plot is all about memory, so timeframes aren't always what they first seem to be. A final comparison is that ESOTSM takes what I believe to be one of the threads in Chain of Fools and focuses its energy on it: no human being is perfect, which means that in a relationship those imperfections are at least doubled--but that's something to celebrate rather than bemoan, because it's both what makes each of us unique and what makes us all alike.
Maybe I'm too used to three-hour movies (this one clocks in at 1:48), but my main complaint is that the stories centering around the supporting characters could have made an interesting movie in themselves, and I wanted to follow those further than the movie took them--especially Mark Ruffalo's character, in large part due to his acting in the later part of the film. My only other quibble is that, towards the end, the movie makes some of its points a bit too obviously for my taste, but that's probably also connected to the lack of enough time to do otherwise.
Not enough Elijah in this one, which is an opinion shared by many of the professional reviewers, but IMHO the last scene he's in is a perfect wrap-up for his character. A number of fans have noted that, because they like Elijah so much, the fact that he could make them feel real dislike or even disgust toward this character says a lot about his acting. From interviews after the movie's release, it's clear that Elijah understands the fiction writers' dictum that even antagonists have what seem to them to be reasonable motivations, and he acts out of Patrick's very well. He inhabits this pathetic, warped person as much as he does any other role, giving him his own voice, body language, etc., but the character could have benefited from more "show" and less "tell." We learn something of his activities by seeing him in action, but I wish there would have been more of that and less listening to him tell his co-worker about them.
As far as I'm aware, this is the most improvisational movie Elijah's done since Black and White, and the results are... well... how about night and day? He's had a lot more experience since B&W, of course, including PJ's "laying the tracks while the train's approaching" style of movie-making. And from listening to Elijah talking about the making of ESOTSM in interviews, it sounds as if he had people around him who were able to support and encourage him, and even teach him some things about that acting style.
R-rated for language, sexual situations (but no graphic sex), and some drug use. If someone's mature enough to follow the story - and to relate to what it says about relationships - he or she is most likely mature enough to handle the R-rated content.
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