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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind film review

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND

Running time: 108 mins
Starring: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Kirsten Dunst

Few films will divide people this year as much as the latest from the crazed mind of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Kaufman, you may remember, was responsible for the hugely innovative and hugely weird Being John Malkovich, as well as the sublime Adaptation (co-written by a twin brother that never actually existed). Both films were also directed by Spike Jonze, who was able to hone Kaufman's surreal scripts into masterpieces of modern cinema. However, in between those two films came Human Nature, directed by French pop video maestro Michel Gondry. The film sat on the shelf before a minimal release and was, to put it kindly, a bit of a mess. Now Gondry and Kaufman have re-united, and the result is going to irritate as many people as it is going to charm.

If you're expecting another Jim Carrey film where the comedian's zany antics are at the forefront, then forget it. The rubber-faced one leaves his wacky mannerisms at home to play Joel, a self-confessed dullard. He's pretty quiet and pretty average. Joel meets Clementine (Kate Winslet) at a friend's party (although it might have been on a train) and they become an item. Clementine is the opposite to Joel - loud, kooky and sporting a different hair colour every week.

But they split, and Joel is devastated. He wishes he could get Clementine out of his head, and fortunately Lacuna Inc, a specialist company in memory control, has set up shop in his town. Lacuna's boss, Dr. Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), assures Joel that just a simple procedure will erase all trace of Clementine from Joel's mind and he can live happily again. Joel wonders if there will be any possible brain damage. "Technically speaking", replies the doctor, "the operation is brain damage".

So the good Doctor sends his team of nerdy techies Frank and Patrick (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) round to Joel's house to perform the procedure - it must be undergone at home with articles of the soon-to-be-forgotten person's possessions on hand. Thanks to the fact that Frank is more interested in getting it on with the company secretary Mary (Kirsten Dunst) and that Patrick is now himself in a relationship with Clementine, things start to go badly wrong, and we are treated to many glimpses of what is going on inside Joel's mind.

All of the above may or may not be the case of course, as Kaufman plays with our expectations as well as anything approaching conventional storytelling techniques. Thus, we see several versions of Clementine and Joel, some in which she too has had the procedure, some in which they live happily together, and some in which the strangest things happen - if you want to see Carrey and Winslet being literally washed down a plughole then you've come to the right place.

Gondry's direction tries to accommodate the haphazard script and is full of tricksy, and occasionally impressive, camera effects. Instead of keeping the script on the straight and narrow, however, Gondry appears only too keen to take everything to an extremity which is likely to alienate many viewers. But the question that most viewers will have to answer for themselves is whether it's another work of monumental genius, or an extraordinary folly. Arguments will abound.

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