Jim Carrey glorifies the schlub, the kind of guy that turns the air around him stale, but underneath he courses with manic/maniacal energy. Jimmy C. is capable of subtlety, we have seen it in flashes, but he has never gotten that Oscar-caressing role: the one perfectly suited to his “dramedic” talents. Fortunately, Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation”) is out there. The mad jester of mind-bending has given Carrey his vehicle in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”… and this ain’t no Ford Pinto.
In “Sunshine,” Carrey is Joel, the schlubbiest schlub that ever schlubbed a schlub. He lives a banal existence, spiced up by an occasional donning of a concrete grey wool hat and the whacked-out doodles he makes in his man diary. In comes Kate Winslet, last seen in god-knows-what, last remembered for posing for a different type of doodle for Leonardo DaVinciCaprio. Her coif changes colors more than Michael Jackson (hardy har har); often it is a blazing sunshine-y orange to fit her name: Clementine of My darling fame. (Imagine all the potential suitors in your entire life serenading you with the same song, with a self-satisfied smirk for their originality and cuteness quotient. I wish my name was Cecilia.)
Clementine is wont to whisk Joel away to revel and carouse, immune to his dullness for she is spunky and boisterous enough for the two of them and a middle school marching band. The trick’s got it goin’ on though, and, like the Tilt-o-Whirl, initial apprehension is overwhelmed by the sheer excitement of the ride. (I have motion sickness, so I personally equate it to that euphoric testicle thing on the playground swings). Joel and Clementine’s chemistry appears debatable. I would characterize it more as anatomy (wink), but apparently there is a spark. Each possesses the traits that the other does not. To paraphrase a modern classic, they “complete” each other.
Any way you look at it, love is rarely permanent, but the memory of it is. In Sunshine’s world, for a price, an individual can be permanently excised from the patient’s memory banks. Peace of mind can be affordably purchased for all intents and purposes in what seems like a podiatrist’s office (Lacuna Inc.’s magical memory medicine men/woman are schlubs too, but pervy ones. Elijah Wood ditches the Ring in favor of sniffing panties and Kirsten Dunst opts for unattractive men in place of Spider ones). Even whackier, Sunshine takes what is assuredly the bowels of existence, Rockville Center (the “Dirty South” of Long Island and where some of my kin reside) and makes it seem inhabitable.
Memory excisions abound, but Joel changes his mind, literally: he realizes that Clementine was extra-special to him and he tries to reverse the erasure process i.e. go over the waves of white-out with a determined fingernail. Director Michel Gondry, of music video fame, crafts several honest-to-Yahweh moments of visual transcendence. The boundless emotion that surrounds memory and heartache has rarely been pictorially rendered in a perfectly evocative manner. I always knew the truth lay in Bjork videos.
The unwitting consequence for Joel and Clementine is that when you erase an individual, a memory, you are erasing the good with the bad and you are losing a part of yourself. Carrey and Winslet know something is missing, a vital part of themselves, part of their essence… their je ne sais quoi…they are not complete without each other. In my life, I have had only a small taste of the type of emotion Joel feels. The girl in question was pretty much a horrible person (past tense because I only think of her how she was then) and, yes, the heart is a many-blendered thing. It would be awfully sweet to just cast the memory of her aside, but good times are too pure a treasure to abandon. So call me the Elephant Man because I need to remember it all. (Words from the heart sprinkled in. Y’all know how I roll.)
Sunshine delves into the fractured psyches of the heart-broken, and that is far more entertaining than it sounds. Jim Carrey is a revelation; serious Jim has arrived. The film is an affectingly-wrought gem; Kaufman’s creation radiates brilliance and visually it is a 1st round knockout. I only wish the film had stabbed the viewer in the love-seat a little more, been a little darker. Yes, all love is a little hokey and usually pretty darn cute, but the pain of it is what is most alluring because there is no feeling quite like it.
The biggest coup of the film was it allowed me to mercifully forget “Vanilla Sky”… the “Ishtar” of mind-benders. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is the right kind of mind-fuck film; you do not need a mind condom to enjoy it. Just give into the pleasure.
Rating for Carrey and the film: 3.5 Ribbed for Her Pleasures out of 4.
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