The New York Times article “’Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ Remains Hard to Forget” written by Madeleine Connors stated, “Michel Gondry’s surreal love story stunned audiences in 2004 and remains hard to forget 20 years later,” and I couldn’t explain it anymore perfectly. Though the film was about forgetting, I have not stopped thinking about it since the moment the credits rolled.
The movie, directed by Michel Gondry and written by Charlie Kaufman, scored a 92% on rotten tomatoes and a 4.2 on Letterboxd, and earned 72 to 73 million dollars in the box office. The idea for the movie originated from French artist Pierre Bismuth, who asked the director, “What if you received a card in the mail stating that you had been erased from someone’s memory, and that you should no longer attempt to contact them?”
The performances of Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet were as mesmerizing as the story itself. The romantic relationship between the main characters with Jim Carrey as Joel with Kate Winslet as Clementine was tumultuous.
Instead of living through the hurt of ending a relationship, Clementine instead chose to have her memories wiped. Is the love between two people more than just memories that can be forgotten or is there more at the core?
As we traveled through the journey of these two characters, this question sat with me. Is having bad memories with a person better than having no memories of them at all?
This movie is now one of my favorites due to the surreal world that the director Michel Gondry and the writer Charlie Kaufman created. For example, the way they used people with no faces to represent Joel slowly losing his memory, was haunting.
Visual aspects such as that made me feel like I was in a fever dream. Ellen Kura’s cinematography work effectively pulled me into Joel’s mind. Overall, this movie tackles the universal questions we have about the value of love and loss, is it worth it?
This movie falls under basic genres such as science fiction, drama, and romance but it’s hard to be put into a singular category because of its philosophical concepts and ethical questions concerning love and loss. If you enjoy movies like “Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)” or “500 Days of Summer (2009),” this movie should definitely be on your watch list.
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Featured photo by Focus Features.
