Together, they made a fascinating if flawed film that pushes and pulls against itself like its central couple, brought to life by the unlikely pairing of Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.
As Winslet told Liveabout.com: “I have played Ophelia, and he was Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.” But the two actors have chemistry, and need it, because the film shows their characters at their very worst, yet still requires us to root for them.
One Valentine’s Day, bookish Joel Barish (Carrey) ditches work and takes the train to the beach at Montauk, Long Island. Here, he meets the outspoken Clementine Kruczynski (Winslet), who has dyed-blue hair and personality to spare.
How The Butterfly Effect with Ashton Kutcher filled a void in US cinema
How The Butterfly Effect with Ashton Kutcher filled a void in US cinema
Though they are polar opposites – he is an introvert, she is an extrovert – there is an undeniable spark between them. But is it chemistry or just déjà vu?
We soon learn that Clem and Joel are lovers who have recently split up, and that she visited a company called Lacuna to get all memory of him erased.
When he discovers what she has done, he decides to undergo the procedure, too, but changes his mind halfway through, causing all kinds of imaginative cine-havoc.
Nicolas Cage and Björk were the first choices for the roles – and who would not want to watch that movie? – but Carrey and Winslet give it all they have got.
Carrey brings a subdued charisma to Joel, which is lucky because otherwise he is an absolute drip, and Winslet makes the abrasive Clementine slightly more bearable.
Still, it is hard to warm to either of them because, for the most part, we see them behaving terribly as they fight over the crumbs of a ruined relationship.
When Joel asks whether it will give him brain damage, Howard tells him, “Technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage. It is on a par with a night of heavy drinking, nothing you’ll miss.” As if in agreement, an intoxicating wooziness infuses the entire movie.
As Joel has his memories of Clem erased, scenes collapse into each other, with characters moving, impossibly, from one location to the next as if in a dream.
Most of this is achieved with minimal CGI, giving the film an appealing handmade quality, like the magical early films of the Lumiere brothers.
When Joel and Clementine team up to try to stop the Lacuna process, we see them dashing across the concourse at New York’s Grand Central Station, as the other commuters disappear into thin air around them.
Another scene takes Joel right back to his childhood; a clever bit of forced perspective sees him hiding under the table in his pyjamas while Clementine talks to his mother in the foreground.
It is this freewheeling feeling, the sense that anything could happen, that sets the film apart, rather than its problematic central couple.
The 40-something Carrey also feels a little too old to play the rudderless Joel. Should he not have found some sort of path through his own failings by this point?
By all accounts, Gondry thrived on making his actors uncomfortable.
Carrey was recovering from a break-up of his own, and the director wanted him to remain in that emotional state for the shoot. “That’s how f***ed up this business is,” Carrey said in the 2017 documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond.
Kate Winslet regrets working with Hollywood ‘men of power’
Kate Winslet regrets working with Hollywood ‘men of power’
According to Variety, the two almost came to blows when Winslet fainted on set during a lengthy set-up. “Are you going to punch me in the face?” goaded Gondry. In an early scene Winslet really did hit Carrey on the arm, at Gondry’s instruction.
Clearly, this is no way to treat people, but it befits a film with cynicism so deep in its bones.
It proposes that every couple we meet is either unhappy, lying to each other or being unfaithful, and the bittersweet ending – changed from Kaufman’s original, much darker, one – underlines the idea that love is a lie we tell ourselves to feel better.
What the film captures so well is that feeling of being completely unmoored by a break-up, like the Montauk house we watch being swept into the sea – how being replaced in someone’s affections is akin to being eradicated; how losing love feels like losing a part of yourself.
Upon release, the film was a box office success, and won an Oscar for best original screenplay, with a nomination for Winslet. There was talk of a Broadway adaptation and a television series, but nothing came of either plan.
Perhaps some things are better left in the memory after all.
