Even that sentiment doesn’t appear overly original as I write it, but Kaufman has that strange talent to make the shopworn feel revolutionary, almost as if decades of similarly themed films had never existed. Still, I think Kaufman is after bigger game here, giving us a moving - and thrilling - examination of memory itself, and how we distort the past at every turn in order to reconstruct the present. Phil saying), but it never ceases to amaze how often we forget that fact.
True, self-help literature and feel-good therapy are littered with such thoughts (“Take the good with the bad,” we could almost hear Dr. In fact, Kaufman seems to be saying that the only love worth having is that which accepts flaws, difficulties, and pain. Starring a wonderfully subdued Jim Carrey as Joel and the always intriguing Kate Winslet as Clementine, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is unmistakably a romantic film, but only in that it believes in love without illusions. I feel warm and charged after my screening, but by no means is this review my final word on the subject. As I’ve grown to consider Adaptation one of the best films of the past decade (and this from a man who loved it to begin with), I have similar feelings about this latest puzzle, as it is too early to pronounce judgment. When so much of what we see and hear is breathless in its desire to avoid offense (especially in this post-tit culture), Kaufman’s words push us to an unavoidable reaction, even if we’re not sure of what we’ve witnessed. Some may dismiss his craft as postmodern smoke and mirrors, but at the very least it is impossible to remain neutral in the face of his work. The common link with all three, of course, is screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, arguably the most talented scribe working today, and certainly the most clever.
I have no doubt that a week from now, I will still be pondering its mysteries, much in the same way I considered Adaptationand Being John Malkovich. Twenty-fours after seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I’m still thinking about it.