Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

15 Mar, 2024

Updated March 20, 2024

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004, Michel Gondry.

You can erase someone from your mind. Getting them out of your heart is another story.

I re-watched Eternal Sunshine last night, something that has been on my mental to-do list for quite some time. Originally I wanted to watch it as part of a Jim Carrey trilogy (to date I have now watched this, and The Truman Show - I'm short one film). But I never got around to it, until now; which seems to be the perfect time because it's the 20th anniversary of the film.

I wrote a new review of it in Letterboxd; here's the text:

I can't fathom why I didn't rate this a 5 when I first entered this into Letterboxd.

The prologue for this movie is so great; I wonder what someone would think if they somehow went into this movie without knowing anything about the plot or premise. Could Lacuna erase my knowledge of the film and any trailers etc so I could watch it with fresh eyes?

I love the way the film plays with memory as well. I like that we don't see complete sequences - we see key moments in Joel's memory, but not everything - and isn't that how we remember things? Most of the time we get key details that come back to us, but we don't remember things as if they were a movie or narrated in a book.

This movie simultaneously makes me happy and sad.

I originally rated it 4.5 stars; I upped it to 5 last night. I can't find any faults with the film. To be fair, it's a bit of a cheat in that way because it deals so heavily with memory and interpretation of memory, so that makes it easier for a free pass.

Some fun things I looked up or noticed during and after watching the film.

• The company name "Lacuna" is an on-the-nose term: "noun; an unfilled space or interval; a gap."
• I appear to be putting together an unintended Mark Ruffalo trilogy in the past week. Last week I watched Collateral, this week it's Eternal Sunshine, later this weekend I'll be watching Poor Things
• Tom Wilkinson is great in this film, especially when he appears in Joel's memories
• The quote that inspired the film's title (and also is spoken in the film by Kirsten Dunst):

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot:

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned;"

(Pope Alexander Alexander Pope)

• This is the second film in two years that featured Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man, 2002)¹
• It was a bit refreshing to see the co-mingling of technology: 80s (cassette tapes), 90s (CDs), 2000s (cell phones). The early 2000's were an interesting time in tech.

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