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Rating: "If You Leave Me, I'll Erase You."
If I had in my hands the idiot who translated 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' like this, I would gladly inflict a "small brain damage" on him! This is indeed the thematic knot from which the film takes off: a brain damage that erases memory relating to a specific time frame. What to erase and why is up to the patient to decide. Clementine decided to erase her boyfriend Joel, and Joel chooses to do the same, except...
Mr. Gondry has created a piece that deserves the sincerest praise on all levels. The screenplay is effectively rendered through a narrative of flashbacks alternating with flashes of the present that, although a bit bewildering at first viewing (a second viewing is strongly recommended, if only for the actors' performances), turns out to be finally unpredictable and encourages unraveling the plot. Kudos to the technicians for the lights and photography: the film has an atmosphere so palpable that it seems the film emits radiance and energy or gloom and despondency depending on the narrative phase. Credit to screenwriter Kaufman for having given depth and consistency to the characters, which, by virtue of skilled study and convincing acting, transcend from characters to full-fledged personalities. And "well done, well done, well done" to the actors! Despite Dunst never convincing me (and this time too she seems almost expressionless), I must say that Wood effectively portrays the slightly dazed look of the emotionally maladjusted teenager. Jim Carrey from the very first image is, in a certain sense, unrecognizable, as if he had undergone a sort of expressive transfiguration to portray the shy and awkward Joel. Kate Winslet is absolutely stunning, in splendid form. Absolutely credible and engaging acting performance.
The film has an excellent rhythm, the reconstruction in reverse is original, the dialogues are meaningful, whether they are sharp to express uncomfortable truths or touch the tenderest strings of the couple's moments. It's the magic of cinema that a film whose narrative plot unfolds around an unreal episode - memory-erasing operations - can render so terribly realistic every moment of exhilaration and collapse encountered in love relationships. The episodes through which the story between Joel and Clementine is reconstructed represent each phase: from the unexpected encounter to the exciting early days, to the bitter discovery of mutual incompatibilities until the disintegration and the final bitter fall. The side stories (the 50-year-old doctor's marriage in crisis and his extramarital affair with nurse Dunst, her subsequent relationship with the other assistant, and Wood's crush on Winslet) serve as credible satellite orbits to the main love story.
Without frills or sentimentality, dreamlike and at times surreal, ironic and bitter, the film is a bittersweet of truths, those found when probing the folds of the heart and the everyday life of any couple. At the end, the backward journey of this love story returns to the origin of the end, leaving a glimmer of hope - if a happy ending is not always possible in reality, the film seems to save the value of love, which, although ruinous, hopeless, and (pre)destined to fade, remains undeniable and surpasses that of pain, making a procedure as cruel as "erasure" unjustified. To learn to accept pain, to learn that life is not a movie, to learn that love - even if it doesn't last - is still worth living and preserving among the most precious memories. To affirm the importance of real feelings over fake realities cobbled together for a life under spiritual sedation.
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