Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of my favourite movies, ever. Why? Because Jim Carrey is beyond amazing. Because Kate Winslet's performance is stunning. Because the premise of the entire film is so interesting, so heartwrenching and so riveting. Because all of these things combined with the whole low-budget indie thing add together to give you a bloody amazing film. This was another £3 sale buy. Well, now I never think anything in the sales is automatically shit, because finding this film was possibly the best thing that ever happened to me.
I'd never seen Jim Carrey act seriously before (and I'd heard only bad things about The Number 23) so I wasn't all that thrilled about the thought of him in what is essentially a love story, albeit a very fucked up one. And I've never been more shocked at an actors transformance- far from the over-the-top, slapstick performances I was accustomed to, he plays this quiet, pensive introvert, enthralled by a brash, daring extrovert with constantly changing bright hair colours. He does it so well I almost fell off my chair. Right at the beginning, he is crying and he looks so truly shattered and heartbroken, I can hardly believe that this is the guy from Liar Liar.
As for Kate Winslet: she's typically in those 'English Rose' type roles, so it was a pleasant change to see her play a grungy American girl with a 'give a fuck' attitude. Her American accent was actually really believable and seeing her with blue hair was pretty fricking surreal. She was a perfect Clementine; I don't know where she pulled that bitter, jaded tone of voice from the beginning of the movie from, but it was a place she won't want to go cause it sounded damn scary.
The film should be loosely sci-fi but it somehow isn't. Basically, Joel and Clementine have had a turbulent relationship and broken up. On impulse, she undergoes this fictional surgical proceedure to remove him from her memory, and when he hears about it, he does the same. The film is travelling back through Joel's memories of their relationship, him realising he still loves her, forgetting her anyway and then them meeting again. It's such a beautiful film that could only have come from French director Michel Gondry (who is a genius, by the way). And the final scene of them playing in the snow is so aestetically beautiful that it made me cry even harder than I was already crying.
It's one of those films that will have you quoting parts of it for weeks. My favourite is 'I'm just a fucked up girl looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.' Oh, and soundtrack wise, Beck's version of Everybodys Gotta Learn Sometime was the absolute highlight for me, although it did open my eyes to the wonders of The Polyphonic Spree. Pretty please watch it, just so you can admire Jim Carrey's best role to date?
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