Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #102427 in DVD
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English

Amazon.com
Screenwriters rarely develop a distinctive voice that can be recognized from movie to movie, but the ornate imagination of Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) has made him a unique and much-needed cinematic presence. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a guy decides to have the memories of his ex-girlfriend erased after she's had him erased from her own memory--but midway through the procedure, he changes his mind and struggles to hang on to their experiences together. In other hands, the premise of memory-erasing would become a trashy science-fiction thriller; Kaufman, along with director Michel Gondry, spins this idea into a funny, sad, structurally complex, and simply enthralling love story that juggles morality, identity, and heartbreak with confident skill. The entire cast--Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson, and more--give superb performances, carefully pitched so that cleverness never trumps feeling. A great movie. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
Yes, it's another attempt by the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman to replace the antique notion of cinema as persuasive entertainment with that of cinema as some strange, whirring device for the disorientation of the human brain. Jim Carrey plays Joel and Kate Winslet plays Clementine (and, yes, she has heard all the jokes), who fall in love and out of love and back in love again. Fair enough, but Kaufman and the director, Michel Gondry, run the whole story in rewind, as if to prove the Shakespearean theorem that journeys end in lovers' meeting. Just to complicate the issue, Tom Wilkinson plays a dodgy doctor who can, for a fee, wipe the memory of a chosen individual, adored or otherwise, from your mind-a treatment of which both Joel and Clementine avail themselves. The conceit writhes with implausibility, yet it also gives off flashes of high-tech, low-down beauty, as scenes of tenderness begin to go grievously blank before the sweethearts' eyes. Carrey's latest effort to elude, or at least refine, his looney persona is more sincere than convincing, and it is left to Winslet, at once fierce and footloose, to carry the show. On the eighth viewing, say, the damn thing might even make sense. With Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, and a blissed-out Kirsten Dunst-what is she on? -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

one of my all time favorites
If you've ever had a relationship....I think you'll enjoy this well produced film. The acting is good, the direction is good and the story is unique and well written.

Simply breathtaking
I consider myself somewhat of a movie buff; from Weimar Germany to Eastern European to Bollywood cinema, I've seen my share of emotional, intellectual and esoteric tributes to that blessed, cursed, ever-scrutinized human emotion we call love. This is one of the few films that I feel truly captures the feeling of regret and desperation contemplating what could have been. The chemistry between Winslet and Carrey is not particularly organic, but then again their rocky relationship is what's driving the plot, and it more than works in this instance. I feel some viewers might have lost something being stuck on Carrey's more comedic roles, but here he fit the bill perfectly for an awkward, emotionally closed man struggling first to react to Clementine's forwardness, then fighting to retain his memories of their relationship (not in chronological order, but in the order in which they were presented in the film). A truly first-rate and beautiful movie.

Fantastic Visuals Illustrate Journey Through Life, Love and Loss.
What if you could forget a person so completely that you would never know that you had met them, spent time with them, even loved them?

The ability to do exactly that is what lies at the heart of this drama, which takes us on a journey through Joel's (Carrey) mind as his memories are selectively erased. Kaufman's great visuals give physical form to Joel's memories and their systematic destruction: Houses disintegrate, faces become blurred and entire streets crumble as, neuron by neuron, the procedure progresses.

We learn that the impetus for this voluntary brain damage is Joel's roller-coaster romance, and bitter breakup, with the impulsive Clementine (Winslet). As in 'Adaptation' Kaufman approaches love with a realism that is often deeply cynical but ultimately betrays a loner's desire to be loved. Everyman Joel and the untameable Clementine make a good pair, and most of us will be able to identify with their tumultuous relationship.

An excellent, highly imaginative exploration of how the little things in life, good or bad, make us who we are. DVD includes commentary, interviews with Kaufman and Carrey as well as some other extras. Highly recommended DVD!