Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
'Tis sure the hardest science to forget!
--Alexander Pope, from "Eloisa to Abelard" (1717)
Joel (Jim Carrey) is the kind of shy workerbee guy who sets down his thoughts and feelings in an illustrated journal and finds it hard to talk to women. The story of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, directed by Michel Gondry from Charlie Kaufman's original script (from a story by Kaufman, Gondry, and Pierre Bismuth), unfolds from Joel's saying something harsh to his impulsive girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) which prompts her to have her memories of him removed by an electronic process devised by Dr. Howard Mierzwiak ( Tom Wilkinson). When Joel goes to the bookstore where Clementine works to apologize, she looks at him just as if she didn't know him, because she doesn't anymore. Nothing could be crueler to a guy like Joel and when he finds out there was a reason for Clementine's blank expression he's next in line for the process.
The main sections of this lost-love story come in reverse order. The central section is a string of Joel's memories of his relationship with Clementine as the memory hunters isolate and eradicate them, while Joel lies sleeping helpless on his couch (and the surgeon's assistants party and act on their own ill-advised flirtations). Joel submits to the procedure in an access of unmanageable pain, but finds while reviewing the memories in his sleep that he can't bear to part with them.
The movie then becomes an ironic romance in which Joel, the baffled, overmatched knight, tries to rescue the memory of his damsel from the dark knights hunting it down. It's put together like a puzzle but generically it's not that complicated: like many a knight before him Joel succumbs to temptation and has to fight his spiritual adversaries as a consequence. In this scheme Dr. Mierzwiak is the evil wizard and Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood as his technicians the rival knights.
In order for the doctor to locate all memories associated with Clementine, Joel had to bring in every item in his apartment that he associated with her in any way and reel off his memories into a tape recorder. Realizing in his sleep that the hunters won't be targeting memories not associated with Clementine, Joel ingeniously tries to "hide" her in memories formed when she wasn't present, during his childhood, for instance. Altogether, this section has the most inventive moviemaking, warp speed switcheroos involving tricky editing, sound effects, set design, and special effects, as memories bleed into each other, literally fade or fall apart, and are wiped out. This is where Gondry, the commercial and music video wiz, gets to strut his stuff, which he does without detracting from the story, and it also makes some sense of the casting of Jim Carrey, when, for instance, he plays a pint-sized four-year-old Joel to Clementine's sexy-leggy adult babysitter.
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