Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

Year of release : 2004

Run time : 1h48m

Genre : Sci Fi / Romance / Drama

Cast : Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson

The movie was directed by Michel Gondry from a story co-written by him and Charlie Kaufman who wrote the script.

The title of the movie comes from the 1717 poem “Eloisa to Aberald” by Alexander Pope. The character played by Kirsten Dunst actually recites a part of the poem, containing the title of the movie.

The movie opens with Joel who wakes up in the morning, hearing car doors being slammed shut. Going to his car, he finds it with a dent in it, and thinking the owner of the car next to it hit it, he writes them a Thank You note.

He doesn’t feel like going to work, so he takes the train to Montauk. It’s the time around Valentine’s Day, and he walks on the beach, while it’s snowing. He writes in his journal, noticing pages are missing.

He notices a woman on the beach, walking behind him. He notices the same woman at the diner he stops to eat. And then while he’s waiting for the train back to the city. She seems to try to get his attention, but he ignores her.

They take the same train, and she comes near him, starting a conversation. She tells him he looks familiar, and while he says he doesn’t know her, she says it might be the hair, as she keeps on changing the color (only ugly colors, orange, blue). Joel doesn’t seem interested, but Clementine really wants to talk to him, as she seems interested in him.

Back into the city, he sees her walking on the street, and offers her a ride in his car. Clementine accepts, and he takes her home. Clementine invites him inside, and when they talk, she tells him she’s gonna marry him. She then asks him to go with her to a frozen lake she likes. Joel wants out, so he leaves. He calls her right away when he gets home.

The next evening they go to the frozen lake she likes. In the morning, when he takes her home, she doesn’t want to leave him, so she only goes up to get her things, to go to his place.

While waiting for her, a young man knocks on his car window, and asks him what is he doing there.

After this, we see Joel crying in his car. He goes home, and we see a van is following him, waiting for him to go to sleep.

Joel takes a sleeping pill, and after he falls asleep, the men in the van come into his house, using his keys, to erase Clementine from his memory!

Inside Joel’s mind, we see how he found out Clementine doesn’t know him anymore, because she erased him from her memory. Joel says he saw her with a very young guy, Patrick. Patrick is also the name of one of the men working on his memory erasure. I liked how he was filmed until the reveal, from angles from which we can’t see his face.

Joel finds the place which deals with memory erasure, and asks them to erase her from his mind too.

While Clementine disappears from Joel’s memories as he has them, he figures it out, and wants to keep her, so he tries to hide her in other memories where she can’t be found.

At the same time, Patrick wants to go see Clementine, whom he fell for when he erased Joel from her mind, and stole all the items regarding Joel that she gave them, using Joel’s words and ideas to impress her. Unluckily for him, this doesn’t work as all he does is annoy Clementine with it.

The technician, Stan, is dating Mary, who comes to see him while he’s working on erasing Joel’s memory of Clementine. When Joel’s mind fights against the deletion of Clementine’s memory, they call their boss to fix it, and we find out Mary was in love with her boss, and they even had an affair, after which she deleted all the memories of him.

I personally enjoyed the movie. Clementine is an impulsive woman who talks a lot, parties and drinks just as much, and who seems a lot to deal with. I resonated more with Joel who likes to spend his time at home, reading.

From the moment the men enter Joel’s home, and Joel is on the bed, everything we see happens in his head, these are all his memories. SPOILER The scenes from the beginning of the movie are after he erased Clementine from his memory, and is proof the erasure doesn’t work. Another proof comes through Mary, who is still in love with her boss, or maybe fell for him again. END OF SPOILER

I loved how the movie was filmed, how he walks through memories, like in dreams, walking from the store into his friends’ house.

I think that this procedure should have been done at the offices, not at home, as we see through Patrick, that he went through Clementine’s things, stealing her underwear.

I hated Clementine’s style.

The acting was good. This was one of the few movies in which Jim Carrey plays a dramatic character, and he was good.

The visual effects were great!

I didn’t like the soundtrack, which at the beginning sounded as if it belonged in a funny movie. It sounded as if it landed from a comedy and got the wrong movie! I think the movie should have had a sad, melancholy, pensive music.

The movie received positive reviews from the critics and audiences of Rotten Tomatoes ( 93% and 94%) and Metacritic (89 and 8.8).

Cinema Score audiences graded the movie a B-, while the ones of IMDB gave it an 8.3 .

The movie grossed almost 73 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 20 million dollars.

The movie received quite a few award nominations, including for 2 Oscars (for Best Actress for Kate Winslet, and Best Original Screenplay which it won!), 4 Golden Globes , and 6 BAFTAS (winning Best Original Screenplay again).

Michel Gondry directed music videos before making this movie like Bjork’s “ Army of me”,”Human Behaviour” and “Bachelorette”, Kylie Minogue “Come into my world”, Foo Fighters “Everlong”, The Rolling Stones “Like a rolling stone”, The Chemical Brothers “Let forever be”, and you can see the same kind of visual effects in the movie too.

Viewer discretion is advised, as the movie contains mature content.

Rating : Worth a watch !