Wired Mesh

Thus Spake Charlie Kaufman

Things That I Want to Do Someday, No. 497: Build a monorail in my backyard.

That bit of absurdity, courtesy of Heaneyland, seems like as good a way as any to introduce my Pulse review of the new Charlie Kaufman/Michel Gondry flick, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is pretty odd in its own right.

I've been doing a lot of work on Kaufman lately, including penning a 4,000-word research paper on his Adaptation screenplay as a reflection of Friedrich Nietzsche's early works. I promise I'll post that piece soon, but right now I just want to get it graded so I can officially depart my alma mater. And I want to get started on my last -- last! -- Covenant paper ever, a intercultural experience review about my 2002 trip to Japan. I also want to get to bed before four in the morning.

But enough of my moaning. Enjoy the review, and go see the movie.

Magnificent movie finds Sunshine in the darkest of memories

By Aaron Mesh
Published in March 24-30 issue of the Pulse

It is probably safe to say that Charlie Kaufman is the only screenwriter in Hollywood harboring an ongoing fascination with the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s reflections on the self-loathing narcissism of intellectuals have found cinematic grounding in Kaufman’s films ever since John Cusack first dreamed of life as a puppeteering ubermensch in Being John Malkovich. Kaufman’s masterpiece Adaptation, for all its narrative contortions, was filled in every layer with the Nietzschean concept of Apollonian and Dionysian creative forces battling for control of life and Charlie Kaufman screenplays. The writer finally revealed his influence in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, where a Nietzsche quote emerged from the wide mouth of Julia Roberts, thus assuring that Friedrich Nietzsche will forever remain famous for achieving two degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon.

Nietzsche is quoted again – twice, in fact – in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kaufman’s wonderful new collaboration with director Michel Gondry. Both times the reference comes by way of Kirsten Dunst as a naive secretary with a fondness for Bartlett’s anthologies, and the quote alludes to the philosopher’s oft-stated conclusion that forgetting the past is the quickest, perhaps only, route to an dynamic, meaningful life. This is also the sentiment of Jim Carrey’s Joel Barish, who decides to allow Dunst’s ramshackle medical company to erase his memories of ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) after she ignores his last, tearful pleas to restore their relationship.

Or maybe he talks to Lacuna Inc. before he begs Clementine’s forgiveness; the time of Sunshine’s opening scenes is out of joint, with all the foggy uncertainty about causality and order that drifts in as a love affair disintegrates. Joel eventually realizes that he’s not only breaking up with Clementine, he’s watching himself breaking up with her – in fact, each scene so far has been taking place inside his head, while he lies on his bed, wearing a futuristic metal helmet that is meticulously destroying his recollection of the relationship.

With that, Sunshine is off and running, as the Lacuna machinery works its way backwards through Joel’s memories, deleting them one by one as he subconsciously watches. As wild as that premise is, Sunshine never reaches the free-wheeling creative heights that made Adaptation the best movie of 2002. Things certainly grow crazy in short order as Joel’s memories fall apart. Faces twirl into featureless smudges of flesh, words vanish from the spines of books, and the occasional car plummets from the sky. But sadness covers these rowdy scenes like a burial shroud: Gondry shoots Joel’s memories with dark, fuzzy cinematography that perfectly conveys the uneasy loneliness of a lucid dream, or of a remembrance that is stripped to bare bones with time. And every few minutes, you remember that the sequence you’re watching will soon be lost to Joel forever; it’s as if you’re seeing the only copy of a lovely film that’s being incinerated even as it spools off the reel.

Joel also senses something precious being ruined, and Carrey, who up to Sunshine’s halfway mark is morose and guarded, suddenly reaches for the manic intensity that has defined his acting. But Carrey’s hysteria is focused and desperate as its never been before: “Can you hear me, I wanna call it off!” he screams, kneeling on an ice-covered river where he spent his happiest moments. As Joel drags his memories of Clementine into the deepest corners of his psyche, hoping to hide her there, the movie begins to feel like an extended version of the chase scene inside Malkovich’s mind in Being John Malkovich, complete with quick stops at scenes of childhood taunting by bullies and dreadful sexual embarrassments. But while Malkovich’s cerebral expedition was used as a quick gag, Carrey brings real humor and pathos to the journey. And Kate Winslet delivers difficult and subtle shifts in character as Joel remembers what he first loved about Clementine. She begins as a brash, castrating woman full of leering, abrasive chatter, and slowly transforms into someone sweeter and gentler. She’s so brilliant that it’s impossible to remember that she exists only in Joel’s head.

Meanwhile, a crew of Lacuna employees are sluggishly at work in Joel’s bedroom, smoking weed and chasing after Joel’s erratic, fleeing synapses. The interactions of these characters (played by Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood and Dunst) have been derided by some critics as distractions from Joel’s story, but they serve much like minor characters in a Shakespearian comedy: their slapstick underscores the themes of love and loss churning in Joel’s head. (It doesn’t hurt that Dunst once again infuses a small role with the strongest of emotions.) And Joel finally awakens to rejoin them in the real world. When he does, it’s in a series of scenes that repeat the movie’s prologue, as Joel sprints to a wintry beach on Valentine’s Day for reasons he can’t begin to comprehend.

His dash to the ocean opens a flawless finish to Sunshine, one that marks not only Joel’s escape from his head but also Kaufman’s fist written venture outside of his own pensive self-absorption. This ending, with Joel and Clementine looking at each other with a mysterious combination of wearied knowledge and fresh affection, goes down with the bracing smoothness of a cup of coffee after a night of agitated dreams. It’s Kaufman’s hard-earned acknowledgement, one that Nietzsche would have scorned, that the past must not just be abandoned but redeemed. In writing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie Kaufman has transcended his intimidating influences and discovered hope. It’s a triumph of goodwill, and it makes for a movie both magnificent and consoling.

Posted by mesh at April 1, 2004 12:55 PM | TrackBack