FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Michel Gondry - eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind 

"The memories beautify life, but forgetting alone makes it bearable," writes the poet Balzac. "From the eyes, from the mind," believes Goethe. In Michel Gondrys Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind it means for Clemetine (Kate Winslet) that she can simply forget someone like Joel (Jim Carrey). She erases him and the fact that she ever loved him from her memory. Technically, it is explained to us in a friendly voice by a scientist, which means "Brain Damage". The brain is the author Charlie Kaufman's favourite area, whose previous escapades look like pure realism if you compare them to this insane love story. Here the story is radically wound up and unwound and in turn completely redefined. The nice thing is that we feel with the characters, even if they get lost in the middle of nowhere, i.e. run completely off track. It would almost be a fraud to return the whole thing to a chronology: In the beginning there are Clementine and Joel lovers - but this love ends badly. Clementine decides to visit Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) to erase the memory of Joel. And Joel? In return, HE erases his memories of YOU. But the character of love is that it makes her forget the bad ending by the beautiful memories of the beginning. We remember the good much better than the bad. That's why at some point during the process Joel thinks about keeping Clementine in memory. That's why he searches for a few thoughts left, somewhere in the depth of his brain - but the process seems relentless. That sounds like a movie you can somehow get to grips with? Completely wrong! The film opens with Joel getting on the train to meet Clementine. But they've never seen each other before! Everything runs here only by instinct and intuition! Somewhere there is something like a shadow, a deja vu. While Gondry's work is now running forward and then back again and with narrative time simply does everything that works (or not), both fragments follow the common acquaintance they had / will have / had (...) Meanwhile again new complications appear in the laboratory of the experiment, which I don't anticipate any further... But Eternal Sunshine is not only able to make big jumps through the narrative time. The film has an emotional centre and that's why it works. While Joel and Clementine go through different stages of romance and reality in the Ping Pong process, one thing remains constant: the human need for love. Against all resistance, man will take this need! It's also true that Joel and Clementine, as different as they may be (he's shy, she's wild), make a beautiful couple. Therefore they will fall in love again, no matter what science offers against it! For Jim Carrey this role was another chance to show himself as a serious actor. He, with his face for everyone, gives a man who is so lonely that for him a fragmentary memory is still better than none at all! Kate Winslet's Clementine is simply his counterpart and he needs her! Charlie Kaufman's mission is to sictimize the human brain. In his first films, the protagonists tried to archive something outside of themselves. In Eternal Sunshine, memories are all we have! If they disappear, we disappear ourselves.