Staggering

Staggering - I saw "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" Saturday night at the Grandview.

This one snuck up on me.

I won't try to give away the plot - because I doubt that I could. The movie is nearly impenetrable - a labyrynth that uses chronology as convenient, and whose only unifying them (until the end) is that something is desperately wrong. Figuring out what you're watching, indeed, requires some effort. The movies feels like it has dozens of beginnings, initial meetings, conflicts, false endings, re-starts, all interweaving among each other. You know theres' a theme, but you have to work hard to figure it out. And then you're wrong. Shot in a grainy, faded art-house style, the movie leaves you profoundly uneasy - it feels disjointed, yet tells you it's not, but the solution is just...out...of reach...

It's written by Charlie Kaufman, who also wrote "Being John Malkovich", itself no slouch in the "gotta think about this" department. "Eternal Sunshine" is more - more hard to penetrate, more convoluted, more casual with the distortions of perception...

And in the end, it's a stunningly lovely movie. Jim Carrey is very...non-Carrey-ey. No, that's wrong - he restrains his goofiness (mostly), playing a lonely, needy guy with a memory he can't quite shake - that becomes the movie's theme, even though it takes until nearly the end of the film for either you or Carrey's character to realize it.

Kate Winslet has been one of my favorite actresses since long before Titanic, and she only gets better, in this role as a high maintenance bookstore clerk from Lawn Gisland who has, we realize as the movie progresses, the same problem.

If you have a hard time with vexingly elliptical plots, go to "Miracle" (which I also loved, but for very different reasons - more later). If you don't like having to think - hard - about what you're watching, then veer away and check out "Hellboy".

The payoff, though - for me - was incredible. This is one of the most stunningly lovely, fascinating movies I've seen in ages. It's probably not a great date movie, unless your date also loves having to work hard for big rewards at the movies.

But I recommend this movie very highly.

(Be warned - the trailers you see for "Eternal Sunshine" make this movie look like a slightly wacky love story with an allstar cast - like a Julia Roberts romantic comedy shot in low light. It's not. It's much, much better).