Eternal Snobbery of the Sophist Mind

Every so often, film critics fall in love with a star. Often, a great actor catches their eyes, but in the case of screenwriter Charlie Kauffman ("Adaptation," "Being John Malcovich," and, most recently, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"), it is words on a page, not the smile on a face, that have captured the imagination of the cinematic intelligentsia. Such stardom and celebration often leads an artist to absurd and self-indulgent excess.

And in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," Kauffman has fallen head first into this trap. There is little hope that the critical world will come to its collective senses any time soon, however. It may take a few years for them to realize that, whatever snobbery with which they may try to garb it, Kauffman's latest work of sophistry lacks even the coherence and interest that characterized his other quite flawed films.

The story is set in a strange world where memories can be and regularly are erased from individuals who have had traumatic romantic experiences. Joel Bar-rish (superstar Jim Carrey) finds one day that his lover of almost a year, Clemintine Kruczynski (a hideously made-up version of Kate Winslet of "Titanic" and "Sense and Sensibility") has had her memory of him erased on an impulse after a routine lover's quarrel.

Unable to understand a world in which their relationship exists for him but not her, Joel schedules an appointment to have his memories erased, as well.

The rest of the film is an incoherent jumble — the quite irresponsible doctors get stoned and have sex while Joel, asleep, runs through his memory trying desperately to keep Clemintine from being wiped entirely from his life.

The film is doomed almost from the beginning. The dialogue is incoherent without being poetic or interesting. The characters have no depth, back-story or nuanced humanity; rather, they are exploitative tools designed to take the viewer on a disorienting and bizarre journey through Kauffman's strangest visions of his dreams.

Virtually nothing in the plot logically follows from its antecedents; the argument of the film is nothing more than a series of silly contrivances designed to surprise, shock or just confuse the audience. Thematically, one wishes that the film could actually draw out something about the meaning of memory or its value, but the layers of nonsense impede any message from being sent.

Despite the deep and irreparable flaws of this film, there are some elements that save it from immediate expulsion to the ash heap of cinematic history. While the cinematography is extremely disorienting in a way I find unpleasant, it was certainly done with a great degree of care and skill. The special effects are clever. The acting, especially Carrey's, is surprisingly good.

And once in a blue moon, a line pops up that actually speaks to some truth in human life. In some ways, these elements allow the work to far surpass much of the flotsam that passes for film today, but feigned profundity and sophistry are a quick way to undermine a film that has, otherwise, some substantial merit.

If you are interested in judging this critically acclaimed mess of a picture yourself, it plays for a reasonable $6.50 with a prox at the Princeton Garden Theatres at 12:45, 3:00, 5:15, 7:30 and 9:45 p.m.