Defining Favourites: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Michel Gondry takes us through how relationships change our lives, and our view of the world in turn.
Welcome to my Defining Favourites, a section dedicated to essays about films that I feel confident in calling favourites in some way or another — akin to Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” reviews. These essays are for paid subscribers, so if you would like to read more beyond the free preview, please consider subscribing.
Directed by Michel Gondry
Screenplay by Charlie Kaufman
Produced by Steve Golin, Anthony Bregman
Starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson
Premiere Date: March 9, 2004
Running Time: 108 minutes
It’s no understatement to say that we have memories we like to cling onto because they define the way we choose to see the world. This hook is where Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman build towards the picture of a loving relationship, as it defined his protagonist Joel, given what he wishes to remember about his girlfriend Clementine. So it only fits that when the relationship is one that inevitably turns sour, the act of forgetting it ever happened would be too difficult to comprehend, especially when she helped Joel up to new possibilities. After all, if you’re realizing a bit too late that bringing yourself to forget these parts of your own relationships doom yourself to repeat the same mistakes all over again.
For that alone, it’s arguably the most apologetic Charlie Kaufman screenplay. Every minute of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind feels apologetic, in the sense that it’s digging deep into the most painful memories of a romance that never really worked, but was attempted nonetheless. Yet for the introverted Joel, it’s the need to look back into these points in his life with Clementine Kruczynski that set forth a path towards bettering himself, should he ever feel the need to try again. It’s a film that begs to ask ourselves, how well do we really know ourselves inside if we’ve only chosen to retain the good bits and not take a moment to reflect on the bad? The brilliance of this film is stated not from its means of dwelling in the past, but in the knowledge that shaped the person we see in the present.
