Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I've been meaning, for a long time, to post a review of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind here at Rumpus, since it is one of the best movies I've seen in the past five years. I've decided, instead, to direct you to a very nice review of the film by Terry Teachout (one of my favorite critics):

"Michel Gondry, the director of Eternal Sunshine, has put Kaufman’s wild fantasy on screen with bedazzling skill, investing it with eerie plausibility, just as Carrey and Winslet make their characters seem as real as the face you see in the mirror every morning. The result is a piercingly rueful film that is romantic, even optimistic, in spite of itself. As regular readers of this column know, I’m no postmodernist, but Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for all the unabashed postmodernity of its narrative techniques, is anything but nihilistic. On the contrary, its characters labor desperately—and touchingly—to find meaning in a seemingly chaotic world in which reality itself can be altered."

This wonderful film reminds me of one of C. S. Lewis' observations about love: "This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted."

[What, you ask, are the other movies that I consider the best of the last five years? All right, you don't ask, but I'll tell you anyway. They are The Lord of the Rings trilogy (especially The Fellowship of the Ring), You Can Count on Me, and Moulin Rouge! I'm sure I'm forgetting some great movies, and I'm sure my very short list will elicit some howls, particularly in response to the last film I mentioned, but that's okay . . . bring it on. I can talk movies 'til the cows come home. Wait a minute, they are home . . . I'm going to bed.]