The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

[Movie trailer man voice]Imagine a world where you can erase your memories....[/Movie trailer man voice]

Would you erase the painful memories? Should you erase them? Is your life for the better or worse if the painful memories were excised from your mind?

At the core of this film, it is about that romantic/emotional/spiritual connection that finds a life of its own as two people find one another, and in each other they find a strong desire to engage in a shared intimacy, and when that relationship goes sour, is removing that experience the thing to do in order to "move on" with the rest of your life.

Charlie Kauffman's script offers a peek into that process. The film gives an engaging glimpse of what it might look like when you realize that memories are important (but albeit during the process of removing them) and what the mind is willing to do to protect memories of while external forces engage in a seek-n-destroy of those memories. The film is very inventive in showing us the lengths to what the mind will do to store away memories that are finally considered important and precious. Some of the scenes feel like being in a lucid dream, but with something worthwhile very much at stake.

I like the emotional core of this film, it gets to that place where memories of intimacy and relationships serve to provide a foundation to build on for the parties involved. Relationships are complex, the script doesn't pull any punches on the why's for it going sour, but it doesn't understate why the relationship was also something that should not have been erased or forgotten.

The performances were uniformily good all around (Jim Carrey was reined in and believable, Kate Winslet was just dandy, and the supporting cast of Ruffalo, Wood, Wilkerson and Dunst shored up the film well).

It's a challenging film in spots, and you'll want to replay it back in your mind as the film concludes.

I give it 3.75 stars, or a grade of A-.