This is Kaufman’s archetypal male: the self-deprecating, socially impotent loser artist who awkwardly struggles to establish any sort of connection with the opposite sex (remember John Cusack’s mopey character in Being John Malkovich?). Jim Carrey, graduating summa cum laude from the Bill Murray School for Erstwhile Sketch Comics Who Long to Make The Whole World Cry, turns in the most brilliantly understated (read: non-spastic) performance of his career as Joel Barish, a journal-doodling hobbyist and romantically gun-shy loner who’s eager to fall in love but near-paralyzed by his fear of women. Even the film’s title, plucked from Alexander Pope’s 18th-century poem “Eloisa to Abelard,” shows up toward the film’s emotional climax in a particularly arresting voice-over: “How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! / The world forgetting, by the world forgot / Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! / Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.” But where Eternal Sunshine distinguishes itself most isn’t in concept or approach or even plot, but in the disheveled poetry Kaufman plants in the mouths of his characters.
(Time-travel films, a la Back to the Future, have been wringing dry this conceptual sponge for years). At the base of my throat.Įternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a beguiling hybrid romantic comedy and sci-fi gambol about a pair of estranged lovers hoping to alleviate their post-breakup blues by visiting a medical facility specializing in memory erasure, joins a longstanding tradition of films toying with the notion of science/technology as sprung genie-granting wishes easily enough but ultimately refusing to guarantee customer satisfaction. So you can imagine my utter stupefaction when, approximately halfway through his newest project, I detect an honest-to-god lump swelling uncomfortably. But if his previous scripts ( Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, etc.) had a fault, it was that they spent so much time winking and flaunting their own damnable cleverness that the characters no longer existed to show us our faltering humanity but simply to provide an outlet for Kaufman’s incessant cheek-tonguing. Don’t get me wrong, quixotic genius abounds in Kaufman’s tomfoolery.
And you sure as bloody hell don’t tap Charlie Kaufman, the Screenwriter’s Guild’s mod-classic clown, to collaborate on the script. Common sense dictates that, if your goal is to create a deeply affecting film portrait of latter-day romance, you don’t cast Lloyd Christmas as the male lead.
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