Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a 2004 American romantic fantasy film scripted byCharlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry. The film uses elements of science fiction,nonlinear narration and neosurrealism to explore the nature of memory and romantic love.^[1] It opened in North America on March 19, 2004, and grossed over US$70 million worldwide.^[2]

Kaufman and Gondry worked on the story with Pierre Bismuth, a French performance artist. The film stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet and features Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson, Elijah Wood, Jane Adams, and David Cross.

The title is taken from the poem Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope, the story of a tragic love affair, where forgetfulness became the heroine's only comfort.

The film was a critical and commercial success, developing a strong cult following and receiving myriad accolades, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The film was lauded by critics as one of the best and most thought-provoking^[3] films of 2004.

Plot

Emotionally withdrawn Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and unhinged free spirit Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) strike up a relationship on aLong Island Rail Road train from Montauk, New York. They are inexplicably drawn to each other, despite their radically different personalities.

Although they apparently do not realize it at the time, Joel and Clementine are in fact former lovers, now separated after having spent two years together. After a nasty fight, Clementine hired the New York City firm Lacuna, Inc. to erase all her memories of their relationship. (The term "lacuna" means a gap or missing part; for instance, lacunar amnesia is a gap in one's memory about a specific event.) Upon discovering this, Joel was devastated and decided to undergo the procedure himself, a process that takes place while he sleeps.

Much of the film takes place in Joel's mind. As his memories are erased, Joel finds himself revisiting them in reverse. Upon seeing happier times of his relationship with Clementine from earlier in their relationship, he struggles to preserve at least some memory of her and his love for her. Despite his efforts, the memories are slowly erased, with the last memory of Clementine telling him to "Meet me in Montauk".

In separate but related story arcs occurring during Joel's memory erasure, the employees of Lacuna are revealed to be more than peripheral characters. Patrick (Elijah Wood), one of the Lacuna technicians performing the erasure, is dating Clementine while viewing Joel's memories, and copying Joel's moves to seduce her. Mary (Kirsten Dunst), the Lacuna receptionist, turns out to have had an affair with Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), the married doctor who heads the company—a relationship which she agreed to have erased from her memory when it was discovered by his wife. Once Mary learns this, she steals the company's records and sends them to all of its clients.

Joel and Clementine come upon their Lacuna records shortly after re-encountering each other on the train. They react with shock and bewilderment, given that they have no clear memory of having known each other, let alone having had a relationship and having had their memories erased. Joel tries to convince Clementine that they can start over, but Clementine states that it could inevitably end the same. Joel accepts this, and they decide to attempt a relationship anyway, starting their life together anew.

[edit]Targeted memory erasure

See also: Selective memory loss

Targeted memory erasure is a fictional non-surgical procedure. Its purpose is the focused erasure of memories, particularly unwanted and painful memories, and it is a mild form of brain damage which—to relieve his fears of the procedure, Dr. Mierzwiak tells Joel—is comparable to a "night of heavy drinking". The procedure is performed exclusively by Lacuna Incorporated. The characters of Joel and Clementine used this procedure to erase their memories of each other. As part of the screenwriting and promotion for the film, a backstory for the technology was made, including a spoof website for "Lacuna, Inc." that described it.^[4]

Though the procedure in the film is fictional, recent research has shown it is possible to successfully erase selective memories in lab mice. Such a procedure may lead to cures of post-traumatic stress.^[5] There was an episode of Season One of the This American Life TV and radio show dedicated to the science behind this, the findings from which were released shortly before the film was made.

[edit]Depictions of the memories

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Throughout the film a wide range of film techniques are used to depict both the destruction of Joel's memories as well as his transitions from one to another. These range from quite subtle to extremely dramatic:

• The picture quality and sound resolution of the memory simply deteriorate (one example being when Joel talks with his neighbor in the lobby of their apartment building).
• Use of very limited stage lighting (such as when Clementine is pulled away from Joel in the train station).
• Subtle details fade from view (examples of this being when Clementine's name fades away from the Lacuna postcard that Joel has in his hand or when the books in the Barnes and Noble gradually turn white).
• In one case, time and perspective seem to "loop" (the scene where Joel tries to make up with Clementine after she stormed out of his apartment, Joel finds himself unable to get from one end of the street to another – this also combines the elimination of details such as the displays of stores. Also in this scene, we repeatedly see reflections of the lamp in Joel's apartment floating in the air).
• Overt disintegration of the memories (examples of this include the car falling from the sky, the disappearance of a car that Joel and Clementine are in, the disappearance of a fence, a scene where they run through a train station with the people there "winking out", and perhaps most elaborately, the falling apart of the beach house that Joel and Clementine were in).
• Heavy sound and image distortion, faces appearing blank (when Joel and Clementine enter the erased memory of Joel speaking to Dr. Mierzwiak).
• Cycling between the adult actors and their younger selves (when Joel recalls a humiliating memory of being forced by bullies to hit a dead bird with a hammer, the footage switches back and forth between young actors playing Joel and Clementine and Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey. Joel is apparently able to visualize Clementine's youthful appearance because he had seen a picture of her as that when they were still together).
• Scenes of the film use a trompe-l'œil (or forced perspective) effect, enabling the actors to be seen by the audience as life-sized, yet their characters are existing in a smaller world. (Examples are when Joel and Clementine are in the kitchen sink, or when Joel hides from his mother and a neighbor/Clementine under the table in his memory as a child.)

[edit]Frames of reference

^{[original research?]}

There are numerous frames of reference in Eternal Sunshine. One is reality, shown in the group of scenes at the beginning and end of the film that take place just before, on, and after Valentine's Day. The rest of the scenes are taking place in Joel's memory; these can be subdivided into:

1. Memories that Joel gets to relive as if they were really happening (e.g., the date on the frozen Charles River).
2. Memories in which Joel narrates in a voiceover (e.g., the "dining dead" meal).
3. Memories which Joel watches take place and with which he can and does interact.
4. Memories in which Joel is a participant but can break character and change the way the scene turns out.
5. Memories in which Joel relives various moments of his childhood with Clementine in the place of one of the people in the memory.
6. Memories where Joel watches them unfold as if they were on a television screen (his conversation with Frank in the lobby of his building)
7. Memories that had been erased and lingered on in a degraded form (e.g., the faceless beings in the Lacuna offices).

Some events that actually took place during Joel's erasure (i.e. technicians Stan and Patrick's conversation about Patrick's stealing Clementine's panties) bleed through to memories Joel is reliving.

Throughout the film, a useful indicator for when a particular event is taking place is Clementine's hair color. Any time she is shown with blue hair indicates something in the present or a memory from the recent past (from about the time of the couple's disengagement). Clementine has green hair during the couple's first encounter, and shortly changes it to red when they become romantically involved. She then changes her hair color to 'tangerine' orange as their disengagement nears.

[edit]Deleted and moved scenes

The shooting script – which has been published as a book^[6]  – and early drafts contain a fair amount of material that was either left on the cutting room floor or never shot.

A major change that came in editing was that the sequence of scenes where Joel and Clementine are shown (re)meeting in Montauk and then going to the Charles River got moved from near the end of the film to the beginning. According to the Kaufman interview published with the shooting script, this was done to make sure the audience liked Clementine, as without it, their initial impression of her, based upon scenes from the end of Joel and Clem's first relationship, might have been too negative.

Dropped scenes included dialogue on the train, dialogue in Clementine's apartment, scenes with Joel and Naomi (the girlfriend he had before Clementine, portrayed by Ellen Pompeo), Joel in the Lacuna office describing his negative feelings about Clementine in more detail, and scenes showing Joel and Clementine on their first "date". The dialogue from the deleted Lacuna office scene is used later, when he is listening to a tape of himself describing Clementine's personality flaws, and brief moments of the cut scene showing their first "date" are mixed in with the jumble of memories Joel sees of Clementine as the erasure process comes to an end. In fact, much of the content of the film was moved around in editing. A fair amount of scenes were changed on-the-spot by director Michel Gondry, including scenes showing theRingling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in the streets of Manhattan. Another dropped scene was one that took place in a bar where a very drunk Clementine tried to make Joel jealous by coming onto another man (which might have prompted Joel's claim in his taped interview with Mierzwiak that Clementine was very promiscuous). Another deleted scene that appears in the special two-disc DVD set is an extended scene in the doctor's office when Mary Svevo is listening to the tape of her file. Mary is saying in the tape why she should have the procedure done, especially after having to get an abortion. Yet another showed Joel and Clementine together on the couch reading the mystery novel "The Red Right Hand", the one Clementine is seen reading in the diner at Montauk where she and Joel (re)meet for the first time.

[edit]Awards and recognition

Main article: List of accolades received by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Kaufman, Gondry, and Bismuth won the 2004 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

[edit]Critical reception

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was met with overwhelmingly universal acclaim, and Winslet's performance was generally praised. Many critics cited the film as the "best movie of the decade". The film has a 93% certified fresh rating on the Rotten Tomatoes website based on 216 reviews. The consensus is that the film is "a twisty, trippy, yet moving take on love, Kaufman-style."^[7]

Roger Ebert commented, "Despite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, Eternal Sunshine has an emotional center, and that's what makes it work."^[8] Ebert later included the film in his "Great Movies" series.^[9]

Time Out summed up their review by saying, "the formidable Gondry/Kaufman/Carrey axis works marvel after marvel in expressing the bewildering beauty and existential horror of being trapped inside one's own addled mind, and in allegorising the self-preserving amnesia of a broken but hopeful heart."^[10]

In 2006, in issue 201 of Empire magazine, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was voted #83 in their 201 Greatest Movies of All Time pollas voted for by the readers. That same year, Winslet's performance as Clementine was included in Premiere magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time at #81. Claudia Puig, reviewer of USA Today said about her performance that "Winslet is wonderful as a free spirit whose hair color changes along with her moods. She hasn't had such a meaty role in a while, and she plays it just right."^[11]

Carol Vernallis points out that Gondry's experience in directing music videos contributed in the film's mise-en-scene and sound design. Vernallis describes some threads of the visual, aural and musical motifs through out the film, and how some motifs can work incounterpoint.^[12]

In November 2009, Time Out New York ranked the film as the third-best of the decade:

In the past, both director Michel Gondry’s kindergarten arts-and-crafts aesthetic and Charlie Kaufman’s Möbius-stripteasescripts have come off as insufferably twee and gimmicky. So why does this existential meta-rom-com always leave us teary-eyed and genuinely moved?...[T]he duo finally finds the right combination of high-concept and humanity here, taking the what-if idea of a company that lobotomizes the lovelorn into territory that’s funny, painful, poetic and unsettlingly weird.^[13]

Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "Only the bizarre and byzantine brain of Charlie Kaufman could turn this 2004 story about erasing all memories of love into one of the most romantic movies of the decade."^[14] In December 2009, the AV Club declared the film the best of the decade.^[15] Slant Magazine placed the film at number 87 on their list of the best films of the 2000s.^[16]

In a January issue of The Onion, the comic newspaper's A.V. Club rated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as the number one film of the 2000s, beating out the likes of Christopher Nolan's Memento and the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men. The article states, "It’s the rare film that shows us who we are now and who we’re likely, for better or worse, forever to be."

It has been calculated to be the tied-for-second most critically acclaimed film of the 2000s (behind There Will Be Blood and tied with the threeLord of the Rings films) by virtue of its number of appearances on prominent 'films of the decade' lists.^[17]

[edit]Music and soundtrack

Main article: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (soundtrack)

The soundtrack album for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was released by Hollywood Records on March 16, 2004.

The score was composed by Los Angeles musician Jon Brion. Other songs featured are from artists such as Jeff Lynne's E.L.O. ("Mr. Blue Sky" was featured in trailers and television spots but not used in the film), The Polyphonic Spree, The Willowz, and Don Nelson. Beck, in a collaboration with Jon Brion, provides a cover version of the Korgis' "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime".

Notably, many of the vocal songs either revolve around memories or the sun.

During the scene where Clementine enters Joel's apartment finding Joel listening to the tape about Clementine while staring at the skeleton painting of Clementine, the underscore is a poignant arrangement of "Oh My Darling Clementine." The harmonic voicings are such where the melody is clear up until the point of the line "you are lost and gone forever", where the arranger opted for use of dramatic diminished chords in the harmony thereby understating the fact that the two are gone and lost forever having no memory of each other.

Three filmi songs from old Hindi films can be heard playing in the background. "Mera Man Tera Pyaasa" (My heart is thirsty for you) from the film Gambler (1971) performed by Mohammed Rafi, "Tere Sang Pyaar Mein" (With you, in love) performed by Lata Mangeshkar, and "Waada Na Tod" (Break not the promise) by Lata Mangeshkar from the film Dil Tujhko Diya (Gave my heart to you) (when Clementine invites Joel to her apartment for a drink). All the three songs are listed in the original soundtrack credits.

The musical score from the film's opening scenes have also been used in television and cinema adverts in the UK for mobile phone companyVodafone.

[edit]Music relating to the film

Many bands have referenced the film in song, including Breaking Benjamin in their song "Forget It", Bayside in the song "Montauk", O.A.R. in the song Love and Memories, Backseat Goodbye in the song "Technicolor Eyes", Epik High in the song "Free Music", Christmas Fuller Project in the song "Meet Me in Montauk", The Autumns in the song "Clem", Sarah Jaffe in the song "Clementine", Signalrunners with the track "Meet Me in Montauk", and Circa Survive in the song also titled "Meet Me in Montauk" as well as several other songs on their 2005 album, Juturna.

Rapper Jay Electronica sampled songs from the soundtrack on his song, "Act 1: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge)." Your Ex-lover is Dead by Stars is also a reference to the film, and the video to the song is also reminiscent of the film due to the band performing laying down on an iced over lake. Vienna Teng has said that her song "Recessional" was inspired by the film.

Ryan Star's "Losing Your Memory", from the album Songs from the Eye of an Elephant, includes the lyrics "I wake in Montauk with you near." In the context of the song, it is a clear reference to the film.

[edit]Film setting and locations

The film is set largely in the Long Island suburb of Rockville Centre, in Montauk, Long Island, and in New York City.

According to the end credits, it was filmed in and around Brooklyn, Manhattan, Montauk, Mount Vernon, Wainscott, and Yonkers, New York; also Bayonne and West Orange, New Jersey. The Barnes and Noble scenes were filmed at the Columbia University Bookstore. Clementine's house was filmed in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The 100-year old property is now up for sale.^[18] Some of the scenes in Yonkers were filmed along Riverdale Ave and Valentine Ln. Also, the Charles River scene was filmed at FDR State Park in Yorktown, New York.

All of the train scenes were shot aboard a Metro-North Railroad train along the New Haven Line, and the Mount Vernon East train station substituted for the Rockville Centre station.

[edit]Home video

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is available in the U.S. in separate anamorphic widescreen and full screen editions as of September 28, 2004. Both widescreen and full screen editions carry English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, English DTS 5.1 Surround and French Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks.

It is available as a one-disc Widescreen Collector's Edition worldwide. Bonus features included on this disc are:^[19]

• A Look Inside Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – Step into the mind of the filmmakers in this behind-the-scenes look at Eternal
• A Conversation with Jim Carrey and Director Michel Gondry – Witness an unparalleled discussion between Jim Carrey and Michal Gondry as they reflect on their favorite moments from the making of the film
• Feature Commentary with Michel Gondry and Writer Charlie Kaufman
• Deleted Scenes
• The Polyphonic Spree "Light & Day" Music Video
• Lacuna Infomercial

A special two-disc widescreen Collector's Edition DVD was released in the U.S. on January 4, 2005. Bonus features include:^[20]

• Award Winning Screenplay Book
• Feature Commentary with Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman
• A Conversation with Kate Winslet and Michel Gondry
• A Conversation with Jim Carrey and Michel Gondry
• A Look Inside Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Inside the Mind of Michel Gondry
• Deleted/ Extended Scenes
• Anatomy of a Scene with Jim Carrey and Michel Gondry
• The Polyphonic Spree "Light & Day" Music Video
• Lacuna Infomercial

The film was released on HD DVD on April 24, 2007. Its bonus features consist of:^[21]

• A Look Inside Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
  • Step into the mind of the filmmakers in this behind-the-scenes look at Eternal Sunshine.
• Deleted Scenes and Extended Scenes
• A Conversation with Jim Carrey and Director Michel Gondry
  • The star and director reflect on their favorite on-set moments.
• A Conversation with Kate Winslet and Director Michel Gondry
• Inside the mind of Director Michel Gondry
• Feature Commentary with Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman
• Anatomy of a Scene: Saratoga Avenue
• Polyphonic Spree "Light & Day" Music Video
• Deleted / Extended Scenes
• Lacuna Commercial

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