#68 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

In Summary

A fixture in the DVD collection of any university student during the 00's, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a cult classic that has largely stood the test of time.

Set in a world very much like our own, except that it is possible to undergo a procedure to remove your memory of a person, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind manages to mix the mundane with the magical thanks to director, Michel Gondry's, idiosyncratic techniques.

Centering on Joel Barish (played by Jim Carrey in one of his earlier non-comedic roles), the film begins with a chance meeting between this quiet, melancholic, introvert and the colourful, manic, extroverted Clementine (played by Kate Winslet). What looks to be a standard, albeit slightly awkward, meeting is disrupted when the two listen to a tape in Joel's car of him criticising her as if they had met before.

It transpires that they had been in a relationship before, which had ended abruptly and led to each of them electing to erase the other from their memories. The bulk of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind takes place during Joel's erasal procedure, bringing to light the lows and highs of the duo's relationship.

The non-chronological ordering of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, allows the filmmakers to the story in an emotional arc. The first things we learn about Joel and Clementine's relationship was how unhappy they were towards the end of their relationship, the film then slowly elucidates just what it was that attracted them to each other in the first place, leading to Joel desperately attempting to put a stop to the forgetting process.

There is a theme throughout the film of people being naturally drawn to each other, not only Joel and Clementine but the Doctor who invented the process and his receptionist, that if you take away people's memories of one another, there is still a force that will pull them together.

Whether that renders the forgetting process pointless is an interesting debate. It depends on whether you view relationships as driven solely by the innate dynamic between two peoples' personalities or whether external circumstances and moments in time impact the way in which relationships play out.

Depending on your viewpoint, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind either ends on a pessimistic note of Joel and Clementine's mistakes being doomed to repeat themselves or an optimistic one of a romance being given a fresh opportunity to succeed.

A Memorable Quote

What a loss to spend that much time with someone, only to find out that she's a stranger.

Things You May Not Know

• A lot of the dialogue between Joel and Clementine was partially improvised, based on recorded rehearsal sessions.
• The scene where Joel visits himself in the erasing process didn't utilise special effects, instead, Jim Carrey had to quickly move around behind the camera and change clothes so it looked like there were two of him in the shot.
• A scene where Joel had a one-night stand with his ex-girlfriend, Naomi, was taken out of the final film - meaning the actress, Ellen Pompeo, was cut completely out of the film.

One of the Greatest of All Time?
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a unique and impactful film that has something interesting to say about the nature of the relationships but manages to allow audiences to read into just what that message is in whatever way they want to. Despite featuring quite an abstract concept and utilising some odd filmmaking techniques, it tells a story that is very relatable to most people.

The film has stood the test of time because its core message feels very real.