Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Sound:
Judging by the film´s cover, title and description, one would expect "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" to be a relatively quiet romantic comedy. When I first ventured to theaters to see the film, I had expected as much. I was wrong and the notion of this being a dramatic and audibly dull film is quite misleading, as the film has a number of solid science fiction moments where strong effects on the environment are introduced as Joel slowly finds Clementine being erased from his memory. The film contains buildings imploding and collapsing and walls crumbling. There are trains and there are loud and frantic moments where Joel struggles to fight his loss of memory. The Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 soundtrack handles the quiet romantic moments and hectic science fiction sequences with spunk. The sound field is rather enveloping at times and stereo imaging across all channels is quite strong. The musical score by John Brion is subdued and held in check in the background. I would have preferred a little more life from the mix, but it is certainly within acceptable limits. Dialogue is clear. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is an unexpectedly lively soundtrack and the Dolby Digital Plus mix is very good.

Extras:
The HD-DVD release of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" delivers all of the features from the previous two disc special edition DVD release and ports them over to the next generation format. This makes for a nice array of features that only adds to the value of this great disc. A feature commentary with Michel Gondry and Writer Charlie Kaufman runs during the length of the film. Gondry is the film´s director and has a strong French accent. Although it can be arduous to understand every word the Frenchman speaks, he is mostly intelligible. Kaufman and Gondry speak throughout the film and keep each other moving through the commentary. A lot of making of information is revealed, as well as deeper insights into the characters and information about the actors. Although I have four years of French, I struggled a few times with listening to Gondry and had to turn the volume up a bit to have a better shot at fully understanding him. Other than that, this is a nice commentary track.

A long list of additional features accompanies the commentary. The first featurette is A Look Inside Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (11:32). This vignette is promotional in nature and features a portion of the film´s trailer. Although Jim Carrey is trying to be serious in the film, he certainly goofs off during the production of the film. The primary and supporting actors join the director during short interview segments that features a lot of gushing about Charlie Kaufman and his Academy Award winning script. The second short feature is A Conversation with Jim Carrey and Director Michel Gondry (15:35). This featurettes features additional making-of moments, but also face time with the film´s male lead and architect. Of course, there is more Carry tomfoolery. My favorite girl sits down for A Conversation with Kate Winslet and Director Michel Gondry (14:24). Her British accent and natural blonde hair is on display here and as you can guess, I loved every minute of it. I am a bit jealous because the French guy got a hug and a kiss from Kate.

After the Kate interview, there were more valuable features to be found. And yes, there is more Kate. The Deleted Scenes (7:02) are relatively short and feature all sorts of time-coding and other visual roughness from being dumped to the cutting room floor. A couple of the scenes were intriguing. The Polyphonic Spree "Light & Day" Music Video (3:02) finds Jim Carrey meeting technology to lip-synch to the vocals of the decent little tune. The Lacuna Commercial (:36) is the faux commercial from the film and I just loved the music used. Michel Gondry returns with Inside the Mind of Director Michel Gondry (19:46). I wanted more Brit and less French. However, this is a nice supplement detailing the style and nature of the director. It featured Kate in some horribly red hair and Jim Carrey with almost no hair. The Anatomy of a Scene: Saratoga Avenue (17:18) is surprisingly lengthy and looks at what all was involved in bringing this nearly erased memory to life on screen and is a very deep look at a singular scene from the film. This was a great making-of featurettes. Finally, a surprising second set of Extended/Deleted Scenes (18:45) features a longer collection of excised material. I have to scratch my head as to why they were not combined. This second collection of scenes looked better and added more to the story. I enjoyed both sets, but this one was the better of the two.

Final Thoughts:
Even with odd choices of hair color and a lack of her native British accent, Kate Winslet is still the most captivating actress in Hollywood. However, with Jim Carry putting forth a great dramatic performance and Charlie Kaufman´s original story delivering one of the freshest and most intriguing stories in quite a long time, I would still love this movie if a lesser actress portrayed Clementine. The cast is all marvelous and the non-linear story with three separate realities requires a lot of attention span to fully appreciate, but the effort is well worth it. The HD-DVD features a highly detailed and wildly colorful transfer that shows how good HD-DVD can be. The sound track is almost equally stunning and the features are plentiful, informative and entertaining. This is a very good release and a worthy investment for people other that Kate obsessed reviewers. A lot of people have not seen, or know very little about "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and that is depressing. This is a movie that is special and everybody needs to enjoy.

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