..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Directed by Michel Gondry

A thinking man's 50 First Dates, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (the title comes from a poem by Alexander Pope) is about a couple who have had the memory of their love affair artificially erased. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet star in the Universal Widescreen release (23959, $30). The movie begins with them meeting again, and then goes back in a flashback that takes up most of the film, to explain what happened. The flashback is complicated, however, by the symbolic and literal depictions of the erasure being conducted within the mind of Carrey's character and his fight against it. You never know how real a scene is. Sometimes it will begin normally, but then objects and backgrounds will start to disappear as the characters are conversing. Things are also complicated by the less than benign actions on the part of the technicians conducting the erasure-played with a nice comedic flair by Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Kirsten Dunst and Tom Wilkinson. To help keep the viewer oriented, the hair of Winslet's character is different colors for different time periods within the story. Directed by Michel Gondry, the screenplay was written by Charles Kaufman and one of the few flaws it has, as can be witnessed in the title, is a propensity for writerish dialog that sounds unnatural coming from the characters, particularly Dunst.

About a year ago I went to a fall blockbuster and saw for the first time the trailers to Bad Santa and Eternal Sunshine. The trailer for Bad Santa was brilliant-better than the movie turned out to be-as it captured every good joke it could get away with in a green tag trailer and sold the idea of the film's plot precisely. The trailer for Eternal Sunshine, on the other hand (which has not made it onto the DVD, incidentally), was horrible. Unable to convey anything about the story's complications, it made the movie look aimless and boring, a tired rehash of dull clichés about people a little too old to be in the throes of young love. The special effects were barely alluded to. In reality, the film is quite the opposite. It is a worthy continuation of Kaufman's exceptionally intelligent and witty inventiveness. The performances are by no means of Oscar caliber, but they are all highly enjoyable and appealing. There are enough surprises within the story to keep a viewer fully involved, and enough charms to make the involvement worthwhile. At the same time, unlike so many movies, the special effects are used to challenge the viewer's imagination and stimulate thoughts about the nature of memory, love and even cognition.

The letterboxing has an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer looks fine. The musical score, by Jon Brion, is of Oscar caliber, and is especially pleasing in the separations created by the DTS track. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital track is passable, but not quite as delightfully detailed. The 108-minute feature has an alternate French audio track in 5.1 Dolby, optional English, French and Spanish subtitles, a 'commercial' for the memory erasing company depicted in the film, a Polyphonic Spree music video, an 11-minute promotional featurette, 7 minutes of deleted scenes that contain a subplot about the former girlfriend of Carrey's character, and a 16-minute production featurette, focussing on Carrey, that includes a lot of behind-the-scenes footage.

Gondry and Kaufman supply a commentary track, but Gondry, whose French accent can be a little thick at times, does most of the talking, with Kaufman mainly prompting him. They talk a bit about technique, discussing, for example, how lightly applied smoke will make a scene seem more 'real,' and they talk about the performers, describing Carrey's antics on the set and Dunst's discomfort with the improvisation that was going on around her. They say less about the story, leaving its secrets, appropriately, to the imagination.

November 23, 2004

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- by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt's DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
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