Mind-blowing, funny, bizarre, psychedelic, intense and even touching are just a few ways to describe the latest film by scribe Charlie Kaufman who brought us the unconventional hits “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation.” In “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” Kaufman once again teams up with the equally innovative Michel Gondry, who directed his 2001 script “Human Nature.” In this most recent tour de force, Kaufman and Gondry explore the vast and mysterious possibilities of the human mind. Jim Carrey (in his best performance ever) plays Joel, a serious introvert, who upon delivering a present to his eccentric girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet), finds she doesn’t recognize him. He later finds out she has undergone a medical procedure that has permanently erased any memories of him from her mind. Angry and resentful, Joel then decides to have her erased from his mind. But as he is having the procedure done, he realizes he doesn’t want to erase her, so he spends a great deal of time hiding from those memories in his mind. Confusing? Sure, but watching the whole escapade unravel is a ton of fun, almost disorienting. As I walked out of the theatre, I felt as if I had been slipped a mickey during the course of the screening. The film’s stellar cast also includes Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkenson, Elijah Wood and Kristen Dunst. Note to all: This may be Kaufman’s best work to date, and it is sure to elevate Gondry (whose background is mostly in music videos) to an entirely different level.
I met both Gondry and Kaufman at a downtown hotel in Seattle. Kaufman, who has been notorious in the past for evading press questions, seemed surprisingly open to discussion. In fact he and Gondry (equipped with a thick French accent), bounced ideas off one another, often talking vivaciously about the various philosophical possibilities buried in the script. While Kaufman’s mind did construct this mind-altering roller coaster, it was Gondry who brought him the initial idea. Says Kaufman, “Michel was having dinner with a friend in Brussels who brought up this idea (not a film idea, just an idea) about sending a card to people and telling them they’ve been erased from their memories. So Michel came to me with that and we started talking about how we could make a movie story and, well, we really responded to it.”
“Initially, I imagined this really complex world in your brain where every location would multiply by the number of times you had a memory,” adds Gondry. “So when Charlie immediately saw the possibility of exploring a relationship in a deep way, we had to solve some problems associated with memory. He came up with the idea to use the present and past tense that, in an immediate but very simple way, would detach you from reality.”
The script took Kaufman around three years to complete, and it’s obvious that he is one of the most unique screenwriters working in Hollywood. He says his inclination towards unusual ideas is based on his desire to create, as well as feeling alienated from the experiences that make other films popular. And it is true, “Eternal Sunshine” could easily be construed as a romantic comedy, but Kaufman does his best to spin it in a very profound way. “I think I have a reaction against conventional story elements, and romantic stories, because I don’t have those experiences in my life and have always sort of felt ‘less than’ because of it, and so I don’t want to write about them,” he confides. “But in terms of figuring out different ways to tell a story, I’m not sure if it’s reaction or a creative impulse.”
This is also, without a doubt, some of Jim Carrey’s finest work perhaps because he divorces himself from every “Jim-ism” imaginable. I ask them if they were at all worried that the mainstream Jim Carrey element might throw off their dedicated alternative audience. “Do you think they won’t see it?” Gondry eagerly probes. I wholeheartedly assure them everyone will see the film. And they stand by their choice of Carrey, who from the very beginning expressed a genuine interest in the role. It’s also ironic that Kate Winslet plays the whimsical and goofy character usually given to Carrey. “I was interested in the tension and how we could take the script and stretch it,” Gondry says. “So it was exciting for me to confront these two personalities that weren’t matching at first, and were later switched.”
Among their influences in moviemaking, David Lynch—especially his “Mulholland Drive”—impresses both. They also agree on liking “Groundhog Day,” and after I think about it for a moment, it makes perfect sense that they would be drawn to the repetitive and absurd moments of time presented in that comedy. And while they are influenced by their experiences, Kaufman notes that even for him, it can be tricky to decipher what is real sometimes.
“There is this problem when you are envisioning a scene,” Kaufman describes, “that it’s best to go from life, but sometimes you don’t know what life is because your sense of the world comes from what you’ve seen on movies and television shows. I’ll start doing a scene that I feel like I know,” he explains, “but it’s not something I really know; it’s something I’ve seen in a million movies and am integrating.”
Kaufman goes on to say that movies and media images are like a virus that can take over your sense of self. This notion is frightening to him, particularly regarding his own work. He continues, “it’s important for me when I’m doing this stuff to be truthful—truthful in the sense that it’s truthful to me. If I know I’m doing something honest, then I know I’m not putting garbage into the world.” And as it stands, his work holds true to his words.
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