eternal sunshine of the spotless mind analysis

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind analysis full#

His response? “OK.” Love is always worth it, whatever comes after. Clementine insists that Joel will find things he doesn’t like about her, while she’ll “get bored and feel trapped, because that’s what happens with me”. The film guides us to final realisation: when Joel and Clementine clock they’ve already been in a relationship that has failed, they’re faced with the decision of whether their love will be worth another inevitable breakup. At one point, she admits: “I feel like I’m disappearing.” The person she is today can only exist because of both the love and the heartbreak she endured those things exist in equal balance, even if it feels like the pain was so much greater than the joy. Throughout the film, there’s a sense that Clementine has been affected by the loss of her memories. Yet, in all of Joel and Clementine’s misery, the film offers us one hope: what would happen if we embraced heartbreak, instead of fearing it? Why do we always see it as a loss to be grieved? What if we accepted it simply as a part of who we are?

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind analysis full#

When the venerable film critic Roger Ebert revisited the film in 2010, he added an extra half star to his rating in order to award it full marks, noting: “Why I respond so intensely to this material must involve my obsession with who we are and who we think we are.” It’s now generally considered one of the best films of the century.Įternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind trailer Produced on a budget of $20m (£15m), the film was released in US cinemas in 2004 and earned an impressive $72m at the worldwide box office, alongside an Oscar nomination for Winslet and an Oscar win for screenwriters Kaufman, Gondry and Pierre Bismuth. Thanks to its screenplay by the master of existential despair, Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine’s reputation has only grown in the passing years. But there are hard truths at its centre – the kind we may not even want to hear, even if we know it’s good for us. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Poem (Eloise to Abelard) By Dynamic Energy AugThe untarnished intellect of eternal sunshine of the spotless mind poem title is taken from a phrase in Eloise to Abelard by Alexander Pope, which Mary Svevo reads to Howard before the memory-erasing process. Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this week, is filled with so many surreal delights that its story can be easily mistaken for the stuff of dreams. Two lovers, Joel ( Jim Carrey) and Clementine ( Kate Winslet), opt to have their memories of each other erased after a painful breakup, only to meet and fall in love once more.