Movie Review: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I am utterly in love with Charlie Kaufman.
Now, mind you, that wasn’t enough to make me see Human Nature, or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, or anything. But Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. are possibly my two favorite movies ever. I have them both on DVD; the latter was a gift from my shrink. Yes, that’s right; I love him so much I’ll pay seventy bucks an hour and rant about it rather than about my mother or my traumatic experience in the lunchroom.
I’m telling you this because it will explain my predisposition to adore Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—it got similar caliber reviews to the first two, and had a similar topic in mind. (Heh. Mind. As in the eternal sunshine of the spotless one.)
And you know what? Despite my treacherously high expectations, I rather enjoyed it.
The movie was gorgeous, and not just because of Kate Winslet. Although I’ve never partaken in director Michel Gondry’s music videos, I may find myself renting them, because he did a superb job of recreating the subconscious mind. It felt like a dream. Much credit also must go to cinematographer Ellen Kuras, who, more than anyone else involved in the film, deserves Oscar consideration. (Yes, even over Kaufman. He’ll have other masterpieces.)
Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) is a nervous man who randomly skips work one day. He goes to the beach in the middle of winter and encounters a beautiful girl, Clementine Kruczynski (Ms. Winslet, looking ravishing in myriad hair colors) on the beach too. They meet and flirt and go over to her house afterwards.
Suddenly, they’re broken up. It turns out she erased the memory of him from her mind, because the breakup was that painful. We know nothing about it, though, because the rest of the movie is told in reverse (just like another of my favorites, Memento) and in the subconscious of the memory (much like Malkovich) as Joel undergoes the “erasing” treatment himself, supervised by stoned Kirsten Dunst and Mark Ruffalo and creepy Elijah Wood. Midway through the treatment, he decides he doesn’t want to forget, and a lot of the movie is him trying to hide the memories in his mind so he can remember that he was once cool enough to sleep with a girl that looks like Kate Winslet.
Criticism of this movie has primarily hinged on the performance of Mr. Carrey. Poor guy gets no respect—even from me, most of the time. However, I feel like he was so very toned down that he resembled a real actor, and a pretty darn good one. Joel was tortured. I’ll bet Jim Carrey was method-acting using his memories of his previous attempts at Oscar-caliber drama, but hey, whatever works.
However, there was one major flaw with the character of Joel, and I don’t know if that’s the fault of Mr. Carrey or Mr. Gondry or even Mr. Kaufman (god forbid). Joel had no complexity. He was tortured and in love, but he lacked any personality distinct from his relationship with Clementine. By the end of the movie, you knew why he loved her, but you still weren’t quite sure what a woman who looks like Kate Winslet got out of a relationship with a guy who looks like Jim Carrey, besides all-encompassing adoration. (Which is not a bad thing to get out of a relationship, but that could get kinda boring after a while.)
On the whole, however, movies should be judged by the visceral reaction on one’s way out of the cinema, and at the time, my mind was blown. I would very much like to see this again, to see if said gut has changed, but I’m sure I’ll have plenty of times to reassess when Eternal Sunshine is resting on the bookshelf next to Adaptation. and Malkovich.

Movie Review: School of Rock

In School of Rock, Jack Black plays his usual typecasting of the Slacker-Musician-Loser-Dude. Dewey Finn is said SMLD who gets kicked out of his band for being wild and crazy and dirty and actually capable of enjoying himself on-stage. According to the Dashboard-Confessional wannabe lead guitarist, that persona doesn't win you record deals from the oh-so-contrived Battle of the Bands, which apparently only occurs once _ever_. Dewey's best friend (and the writer of the movie) Ned Schneebly (Mike White) has an annoying shrill girlfriend (Sarah Silverman) who is intent on forcing Dewey to actually pay rent. Ned used to be a SMLD, but now, thanks to Silverman, he's a substitute teacher. Dewey pretends to be Ned to get a job, he ends up teaching a bunch of repressed rich kids how to rock and love themselves, and (say it with me now) learns a valuable lesson in the process. (Get it? Lesson? In a school? Of _rock_?... anyway.) I am fairly certain the lesson is something about responsibility and truthfulness, but I was too busy rockin' out, not doing schoolwork, and sticking it to the man, just as Dewey taught us to.

I'd have to say that School of Rock was one of the biggest star vehicles I have seen a damn good while. Mr. Black's likeability is the prime mover, so to speak, in one's appreciation of this fairly funny film. Now, normally, I'd get a little tired of Black's level of mugging about, oh, halfway through the opening credits. But there's something about Jack Black. It's the thing that allows one to sit through Shallow Hal. It's the thing that makes one admit, grudgingly, that they don't mind Tenacious D. It's the fact that his mugging is, like, funny (unlike some actors I can name). Without Black's inexplicable, inherent waggishness, this movie would fall down as flat as Dewey does when he tries to stage-dive.

My primary problem with this movie lay with the kids. This is one of the only movies that I've seen where the grotesquely oversimplified MAD magazine parody of the characters was not actually oversimplified. The kids were that one-dimensional. But it managed to serve the movie's purpose. They weren't _meant_ to have personalities. They were as much props as the instruments they played; as much plot devices as the once-in-a-lifetime Battle of the Bands. Also, the Asian-Kid-Who-Spoke-With-A-Very-Thick-Accent-Despite-Being-Native-Born-As-Far-As-I-Could-Tell was very, very adorable. As were some of the others. And, in the end, doesn't adorability cancel out all banality?