Before writing this piece, the last time I'd watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was with my now ex-boyfriend. We were at his home, enjoying what was, by then, a rare respite, a valley of peace between mountains of quarrel. I had gained a habit of showing him my favorite films, sharing those beloved treasures with someone I loved, maybe looking for a different way for him to know me. This Michel Gondry surrealistic comedy was one of the few pictures we both seemed to adore, and I remember how, drunk with affection, I swore to never forget him. Even if things ended badly – which they did – the promise was made that I'd never wish to erase him from my memory, from my life. Regardless of the hurt we brought each other, I still think that. What we shared is now an integral part of me and that won't ever change.
The people we share our lives with become pieces in the puzzle of our identity. To love is to reshape that puzzle, pain, and euphoria slotted together. I tell you this because it's impossible for me to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Jim Carrey's performance, without projecting meanings born out of love lost…
The film opens rather inconspicuously. A man wakes up, alone. He's Joel Barish played by Jim Carrey, an introvert that's closer to the real deal than the charming facsimiles we tend to see in movies. His narration weaves a tapestry of apathy, perhaps even depression, while his behavior speaks of someone jolted by an unexpected need to flee. At the train station, he jumps on transport to Montauk. There, in the freezing seaside, Joel meets a woman with a shock of blue hair. She's Kate Winslet's Clementine, his opposite in every conceivable way. Extroverted, afraid of silence, she's like a freight train colliding with the palace of solitude in which Joel lives. She collapses his barriers, tears them apart.
In no time, they're spending a night together. Not in sexual exploration, but whimsical travels, a sojourn through a frozen lake that Joel later claims to be one of the best nights of his life. Carrey, an actor used to comedic posturing, leaves those funny masks at home and delivers the line with utmost sincerity. We believe him. However, just as the twee romance starts to gain potency, the film abruptly cuts to a tearstained close-up of our protagonist, alone again. It turns out, the first meeting we saw wasn't the first. Joel and Clementine had met before, fallen in and out of love before. Bruised by heartbreak and guided by her impulsive nature, she erased him from her mind. Now, he's doing the same.
The main story of the film thus happens inside Joel's head as he starts fighting the fantastic medical procedure that will forever rid him of Clementine. Initially, we can see why both of them made the choice to forget. As we witness their relationship backward and Joel relives it along the way, we became acquainted with the bitterness of romance in its final days. Neither performer hides their characters' sharp edges or how curdled their resentments have become. They avoid sugarcoating their abrasive quality and never underplay the cruelty with which these two hurt each other. Even as he implodes in paroxysms of awkwardness and social anxiety, Carrey can add an acidic expression that underlines Joel's toxicity.
I've seen that condescending smile he wears when Clementine talks about motherhood. I've felt its burn sear off the top layer of my skin like hot lava. It's an asshole's move to avoid vulnerability, a shield of irony that hides one's soft belly from the claws of their beloved. I've even done it myself, so I'm well familiar with its effects. Still, it's painful to forget. All cruelties have a reflection of wonderment. If not, they (I) wouldn't try to make it work. Erasing the bad times implies departing with the good. Nothing lasts forever, after all, and to face that end can be one of the most abrasive experiences in one's life. To be aware of the ending as it unfolds, knowing you brought it upon yourself but powerless to delay its finality… that's hell.
Fittingly, Carrey performs Joel's despair to the hilt, making him out to be a man going through a lucid nightmare. When later recollections fade and only the early days of the relationship remain, his desperation gains more feeling. His regard towards Clementine also mutates, losing its edge. He's falling for her again and, as he knows her less, he loves her more. Even in its most romantic passages, the film hides a razor blade ready to stab the viewer. It's a kiss with a punch. It's drowning, like when Joel opens his eyes and Carrey plays the moment like he's suffocating, searching for air and finding none.
Defeated by the procedure's conclusion, Joel knows he'll forget so he's just enjoying the last whispers of knowledge. Goodbye Clementine, he says with his teary eyes, his rueful smile, and newfound softness. They may have been terrible, but they meant the world to each other at some point. Losing that is painful, but, when there's nothing to do, we can just savor the sweet remembrance as it all melts into nothingness. The way Jim Carrey plays the hopeless hopefulness of the picture's very end is even more extraordinary. It's an actor trying to make emotional sense of an impossible situation and miraculously succeeding.
All that being said, it's important to talk a bit more about how Carrey and Winslet work with and play off each other.
Seemingly, they switch their usual approaches to screen acting. He's peeling layers of raw emotion, using dramatics as a scalpel to eviscerate Joel. She's pulling faces, creating self-aware layers of whimsy. Carrey's more characteristic shtick only manifests at a point when identity and memory fold into each other. When, hiding in childhood memories, kid and grown-up share screen time and a single body. For a breath, he's pointedly cartoonish, matching Winslet's more abstract versions of Clementine. Two wildly different ways of building characters, emotional realism versus conceptual comedy, both valid when separate and devastating when together. They fit, but it's never seamless, the tension between them as felt their electric chemistry. It's the sort of thing that's riveting to watch in the movies, but hellish to live through.
While I love the film and the Golden Globes did nominate him, it's impossible to argue that Jim Carrey was sixth in the voting for the Best Actor Oscar of 2004. That spot was reserved for Paul Giamatti in Sideways. Maybe Carrey was an unlucky seventh since his movie did score two important nods and a win. However, Liam Neeson was also in the running with Kinsey as was Javier Bardem for the Oscar-winning Sea Inside. In the end, AMPAS nominated Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda, Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator, Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland, Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby, and, the winner, Jamie Foxx in Ray. For a year rich with extraordinary performances, the Academy's chosen five are surprisingly lackluster. Carrey outperforms them all.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is newly available to stream on Netflix.