Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an Academy Award-winning 2004 romance film by Michel Gondry that uses a science fiction element to explore the nature of memory and love. The film has developed a cult following and was one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2004.

The screenplay is by Charlie Kaufman, who worked on the story with Gondry and Pierre Bismuth, a French performance artist. The idea started with Bismuth, who, according to Kaufman, mailed a note to several friends (including Gondry) explaining that he'd had them erased from his memory, in order to see what their reactions would be.

The film stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet and features David Cross, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson and Elijah Wood.

It opened in North America on March 19, 2004. The film has consistent high rankings in the IMDB's Top 250.

The movie's title is taken from a few lines from the much longer poem Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope:

How happy is the blameless Vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot;

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.

[edit] Plot summary

Emotionally withdrawn Joel Barish (Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Winslet), a dysfunctional free spirit, meet for what they think is the first time on a Long Island Rail Road train from Montauk to Rockville Centre. They are unaccountably drawn to each other despite radically different personalities.

As it turns out, they were once sweet-hearts, but after two years their relationship was in a decline. After a nasty fight, Clementine stormed out of Joel's apartment and impulsively hired a New York firm called Lacuna, Inc., to erase all memories of him. Joel was devastated when he found out what she had done and decided to undergo the procedure himself. However, while unconscious and having his memories of her erased, he rebelled, realizing he wanted to hang on to his memories of her after all. Much of the film takes place in Joel's mind as he tries to figure out how to preserve some memory of his love for Clementine. We watch their love and courtship go in reverse, as the memories are slowly erased while Joel tries his best to resist the procedure and hide.

In separate and related story arcs, the employees of Lacuna are revealed to be more than peripheral characters, in scenes which further demonstrate the harm caused by the memory-altering procedure. Mary (Dunst) turns out to have had a relationship with the married doctor who heads the company (Wilkinson), a relationship which she agreed to have erased from her memory when his wife discovered the affair. Once she learns of this, she steals the company's records and sends them to all of its clients. Patrick (Wood), lonely and socially inept, became fixated on Clementine and uses the personal mementos that Joel Barish gave to Lacuna as part of his "erasure" process in order to seduce Clementine. These romantic entanglements turn out to have a critical effect on the main story-line of Joel and Clementine's relationship.

[edit] Movie details

[edit] Detailed linear chronology

Sometime during or before 2002, Lacuna's Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), who is married, and his receptionist Mary Svevo (Kirsten Dunst), who has developed a "crush" on him, have a sexual affair. When it goes bad, Dr. Mierzwiak persuades Mary to have her memory of their relationship erased. He does not undergo the procedure himself.

Also sometime during or before 2002, Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) meet at a beach party in Montauk, New York, and subsequently become romantically involved.

Sometime in late 2003, Joel and Clementine's relationship begins to take a turn for the worse, as illustrated by a scene in a Chinese restaurant.

Sometime in January or early February 2004, Joel and Clementine have a nasty fight at a flea market. They go home and eat Chinese takeout. She gets bored, goes out without him, and comes back at three A.M. very intoxicated and having damaged Joel's car. They have another nasty fight and she storms out.

Soon after this, and before Valentine's Day, Clementine impulsively gets Joel erased from her memory by Lacuna. Patrick (Elijah Wood), one of Lacuna's technicians, falls for Clementine and uses the mementos of her relationship with Joel that she has surrendered to Lacuna to seduce her.

Sometime closer to Valentine's Day, Joel goes to the book-store, where Clementine fails to recognize him, and he sees her kissing Patrick. He never actually sees Patrick's face, simply noticing her kissing someone, so when he subsequently recalls this memory, Patrick appears as a faceless man. Joel learns from Rob that she had her memories of him erased, a revelation that hurts him a great deal.

Just before Valentine's Day, Joel arranges with Lacuna to get his memory erased of Clementine. He is told to bring any mementos that might remind him of Clementine to Lacuna, and he does (although in his haste, he doesn't get them all, something that the movie reveals at the end.) Patrick acquires Joel's items as well, as indicated by the fact that he has possession of a neck-lace that Joel had intended to give to Clementine.

That night, February 13, after 8:30 pm, Stan and Patrick go to Joel's apartment to do the procedure. During the beginning part of it, Patrick fumbles with the power settings of the equipment. This apparently leads to Joel's subconsciousness becoming "aware" of what is happening since his "frame of reference" shifts from being something akin to passively watching a movie or television program to being present within the memories themselves and able to interact with them and change them.

Meanwhile, Mary has come over ostensibly to help Stan and Patrick with the procedure. However, given the fact that she and Stan kiss each other, it is obvious that she is there more to see Stan than to do any work. In another development, Patrick calls Clementine and finds out that she is upset about something. He asks Stan for permission to go see her, and once Stan realizes that this will leave him alone with Mary, he tells Patrick to go.

As these "real" events unfold, Joel continues to watch his memories being erased and they gradually shift from the bitter, bleak ones related to his disengagement with Clementine to the moments they had together where they were both truly happy. Joel decides that he wants to cancel the procedure. Unfortunately, because he's inside of his own mind, he can't.

While Joel comes to this realization and begins actively resisting the erasure, we see Patrick arrive at Clementine's apartment. She is indeed distraught, expressing fears that she is getting old and that nothing seems to "make sense."

Impulsively, Clementine decides that she wants to go with Patrick to the frozen Charles River, where Patrick tries and fails to reenact the magic of the night that Clementine had described in a love letter to Joel, which Patrick found in Joel's mementos of the relationship.

Meanwhile back at Joel's apartment, Stan and Mary have just finished having sex. Suddenly, an alarm from the machine sounds and Stan discovers that somehow the erasure process has gotten derailed (due to Joel's subconscious resistance). At Mary's insistence, Stan calls Dr. Mierzwiak at his home and informs him that he needs help with the case and Mierzwiak agrees to come over and take charge of things (in a bit of foreshadowing we see that Mierzwiak's wife looks displeased with this development).

Once the doctor arrives, Mary shows that she is still very attracted to Dr. Mierzwiak. Noticing this and feeling uncomfortable about it, Stan goes outside leaving the two alone with Joel. After some awkward talk, Mary kisses the doctor. Mierzwiak initially tries to fend her off, but he quickly begins to kiss her back. However, this train of events is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of the doctor's wife. During the ugly scene that follows, Mary learns of her prior history with the doctor and this is an enormous shock to her. She walks off into the night, leaving Stan and Mierzwiak to complete the erasure.

In the original screenplay, Mary had an abortion (of her and Dr. Mierzwiak's child), which prompted her to get the Lacuna procedure. However, this did not make the final cut.

Despite the distractions described above, Mierzwiak and Stan are able to get the erasure process back on track. Inside Joel's subconsciousness, we see his efforts to fight this fail, and he decides to simply enjoy his memories of Clementine before they fade away into nothing. The very last memory we see is that of Clementine and Joel meeting at the beach party at Montauk. The climactic moment in this memory is when Joel relives with Clementine the time when they sneaked into a beachhouse at Montauk. The end of the scene has Joel telling Clementine that he loves her, and her telling Joel to "meet me in Montauk."

This final scene also explains why at the beginning of the movie, Joel hears a woman's "voice on the wind" saying "David and Ruth Laskin." These were the owners of the beach house, something Clementine noted while she and Joel were in the house. The inference is that this is a trace of a memory that the erasure process missed and which being near the beach house triggered for Joel.

Valentine's Day 2004, Joel wakes up with his memory erased. He decides to skip work, takes the train to Montauk (acting on the instruction that his memory of Clementine gave him) and (re)meets Clementine there. They travel back on the same train, and both find themselves—for them—mysteriously drawn to each other. Back in Rockville, Joel offers Clementine a ride back to her apartment. She invites him in for a drink and he leaves shortly afterwards with her number, promising to call her. When he does, they make a date to go to the frozen Charles the next day (February 15), which they do. (This is the first time we see them on the ice together though it is, at the very least, the second time they are there chronologically.)

Meanwhile, Mary has quit her job and starts mailing out the memory files and tapes that she stole from the office to Lacuna's clients (including Clementine and Joel).

The morning after their meeting on the Charles (i.e., February 16), Joel drives Clementine back to her house. She asks if she can come over to his place to sleep (although she appears to be feigning exhaustion and might be using this as an excuse for a romantic encounter), and then goes inside to gather some toiletries. While she's inside, Patrick approaches Joel and expresses puzzlement over why he is with Clementine after having his memory erased (we see this scene in full at the beginning of the movie and in passing near the end).

Clementine picks up her mail (which includes the file that Mary sent to her the morning of Valentine's Day) and Joel and Clementine drive off. They listen to the tape of her telling Dr. Mierzwiak about Joel prior to her erasure (in a hateful and spiteful tone). A deeply hurt and bewildered Joel makes Clementine get out of the car. As she returns to her apartment (near tears) a love-lorn Patrick approaches Clementine on the steps to her building, but she angrily tells him to "get the fuck away" from her.

Some time later the same day, Clementine drives herself to Joel's apartment. She finds him there listening to his tape about her, which he found in his mail upon getting home (this apparently also caused him to ransack his apartment looking for evidence of their relationship and discover the "skeleton" painting that he did of her in happier times—a brief memory seen right after Joel decides to fight the erasure). Clementine insists on listening to Joel's tape, reasoning that it's only fair considering he heard all the hurtful things she said about him on her tape. But Clementine is deeply wounded when she hears Joel angrily say in the recording that the "only way that Clementine can get people to like her is to fuck them," and decides to leave (despite Joel's effort to apologize). Joel follows her into the hallway and asks her to wait, not knowing what to do. Clementine tells Joel that their relationship is bound to fail, based on what they now know about it. However, Joel just shrugs and says "O.K.".

For a brief moment, Clementine looks bewildered by Joel's response, but then she quickly nods her head. Both of them begin to laugh over the absurdity of the situation. The final shot of the film is of the couple playing in the snow on Montauk Beach, where they had first met. It is unclear whether this scene took place before or after Clementine and Joel had their memories erased and then remet.

The last scene plays several times on a loop. It has been suggested (though debated) that this indicates that Joel and Clementine become stuck in a cycle of perpetually meeting, breaking up, having their memories erased, and meeting again. This was the melancholy ending of the original screenplay.

[edit] Frames of reference

There were numerous frames of reference in Eternal Sunshine.

One was reality, shown in the group of scenes at the beginning and end of the movie that take place just before, on, and after Valentine's Day.

The rest of the scenes could be broadly classified as taking place in Joel's memory, but these can be subdivided into:

1. Memories that Joel gets to relive as if they were really happening (e.g., the date on the frozen Charles).
2. Memories in which Joel narrates in a voiceover (e.g., the "dining dead" meal).
3. Memories which Joel watches take place and with which he can and does interact.
4. Memories in which Joel is a participant but can "break character" and change the way the scene turns out.
5. Memories in which Joel relives various moments of his childhood with Clementine in the place of one of the people in the memory.
6. Memories that had been erased and lingered on in a degraded form (e.g., the faceless beings in the Lacuna offices).

Some events that actually took place during Joel's erasure (i.e. technicians Stan and Patrick's conversation about Patrick's stealing Clementine's panties) bleed through to memories Joel is reliving.

Finally, a useful indicator for when a particular event is taking place is Clementine's hair color. Any time she is shown with blue hair indicates something in the present or a memory from the recent past (from about the time of the couple's disengagement). Clementine has green hair during the couple's first encounter, and shortly changes it to red when they become romantically involved. She then changes her hair color to orange as their disengagement nears.

[edit] Joel's childhood

The memory of Clementine that Joel's subconscious interacts with suggests that he somehow hid her in other memories in which she did not belong. The apparent idea behind this was that this would preserve Joel's memories of Clementine from the erasure procedure. Joel therefore conjures memories from his early childhood (the scenes in his mother's kitchen), and when this tactic fails, his memory of Clementine urges him to hide her "in his humiliation." These turn out to be scenes in which his mother walks in on him masturbating and where bullies pressure him into hitting a dead bird with a hammer. The latter scene was meant to express a common early memory, when children are forced by others to do things they don't want to, something Jim Carrey revealed in an interview included as an extra on the D.V.D.

Hiding Clementine causes problems with the memory-erasing procedure, and leads Dr. Mierzwiak to come over to Joel's apartment to help Stan, which leads to Mary's discovery of her past relationship with the doctor. In turn, this precipitates Mary's decision to mail to all of Lacuna's clients their files (which leads to Joel and Clementine discovering that they have had a tumultuous past relationship).

An interesting note here is that Joel was accused by Clementine of not opening up and being intimate with her, never sharing his feelings, humiliations, and shames. During the erasing he embraces total intimacy by hiding her in those memories he would not share.

[edit] Mary Svevo

There are several hints early in the movie that foreshadow Mary's previous relationship with Mierzwiak. The first is the way that she looks and acts around him when Joel first comes into the clinic. Then, when she comes over to see Stan during Joel's procedure, she speaks flatteringly of Mierzwiak's intellect, saying that he should be quoted in Bartlett's. Stan gives a look of exasperation at her fawning over the doctor. When Mierzwiak does come over, she proceeds to fawn over him and mentions some obscure quotes, apparently ones she had used on the doctor before her memory erasure, since Mierzwiak is familiar with them.

Late in the movie, Mary makes her feelings known to the doctor, and they eventually kiss. Mrs. Mierzwiak shows up and in the confrontation that follows, Mary learns that she had had a relationship with Mierzwiak, and she let him erase her memory of it. Devastated, Mary goes to the Lacuna office and listens to her tape. (In a deleted portion of this scene, there is a bit of dialogue in which we learn that Mary had a natal abortion in the wake of the affair.) Mary clears out her desk, steals all Lacuna's files and tapes, and mails them to their clients, on the grounds that the procedure is a mistake.

It is unclear what Stan knew about Mary's relationship with Mierzwiak or her undergoing the memory-erasure procedure. At the end of the movie, he emphatically claims that he didn't, that he only saw the two together one night, and that she looked "happy" with a secret, but that he only had suspicions. However, when Mierzwiak comes over, Stan is noticeably agitated, not just because of Joel's procedure being a mess, but of Mary being there. He also honks his van's horn when Mrs. Mierzwiak arrives to warn the two former lovers of her arrival.

Mary Svevo's name may be a reference to Italo Svevo, whose Confessions of Zeno is about a man who is trying to explain himself to his psychiatrist by revisiting his memories.

[edit] Huckleberry Hound

When Clementine and Joel meet on the train to Rockville Center (after they've both been erased), Joel doesn't know the song "Oh My Darling, Clementine". But when they first meet on the beach in Montauk (the real first time they've met, before they'd both been erased), Joel did know the song.

This is apparent for two reasons. Firstly, when Joel first met Clementine, he addressed how her name reminded him of the song (despite Clementine's pleas for "no jokes") and of his Huckleberry Hound doll he had as a child. Since this was a memory of Clementine, it and his knowledge of Huckleberry Hound were erased. Secondly when Joel is trying to resist the erasing procedure and hides in an early memory, we see his mother bathing him in the sink singing the Huckleberry Hound song. The significance of this is that it implies that more than just memories of a certain person are lost with the procedure. Although the change is minor in this case, the procedure may make significant changes to the receipient.

Both the clementine and the tangerine (which is used as Clementine's nickname by Joel after she dyes her hair bright orange) are types of mandarin orange.

[edit] The end

Kaufman made it very clear in an interview included with the published shooting script [1], that the story ended with the final scene of Joel and Clementine in the hallway, in which they appeared to have agreed to give their relationship one more try. He said it was up to individual members of the audience to decide what would have ultimately happened. This "unfinished" resolution of the story is foreshadowed with the following dialog in the scene where Joel relives the memory of approaching Clementine at the bookstore where she worked after they first met at the beach party:

Joel:  It would be different if we could just give it another go-around.

Clementine:  Remember me.  Try your best.  Maybe, we can.

There is debate as to what the repeated scene of Joel and Clem playing in the snow right before the credits means. In an interview also included with the published shooting script, Gondry said he wanted the scene of them playing in the snow to loop throughout the credits. This desire apparently sprang from the initial intent that the movie ends with the depressing revelation that Joel and Clementine spent the rest of their lives meeting, parting, and getting erased, only to meet again. However, Gondry said that this was not done, because it would ultimately detract from the credits.

Several photo-stills that were from footage that wound up on the cutting room floor show Joel and Clementine sitting together on the steps to Joel's building with their arms around each other (and dressed in the same clothes that they wore in the hallway scene). This suggests a less ambiguous "happy ending" may have been contemplated at one point but was decided against.

[edit] Targeted memory erasure

Targeted memory erasure is a fictional non-surgical procedure. Its purpose is the focused erasure of memories, particularly unwanted and painful memories, and it is a mild form of brain damage comparable to a "night of heavy drinking". The procedure is performed exclusively by Lacuna Incorporated. The characters of Joel and Clementine used this procedure to erase their memories of each other. As part of the screenwriting and promotion for the film, a backstory for the technology was made, including a spoof website for "Lacuna Inc." which is the source for the following information.

[edit] Lacuna, Inc.

The fictional Lacuna Inc. was the brainchild of Dr. Howard Mierzwiak who after years of neurobiological research developed a painless method for identifying and erasing specific memories. Lacuna Inc was founded to provide a research facility for the development of this procedure. Over the years, the project has progressed from a mere idea into a full-blown medical service.

After a patient decides what memory it is going to have erased, there is some initial preparation that goes into a successful procedure. The patient is instructed to collect any items or mementos that have any ties to the memory or memories being targeted. These items will be used by the Lacuna team during and disposed of following the procedure. This is to ensure that the patient will not have any inexplicable items after the memory erasure.

While connected to a brain scanning device, the patient is instructed to look at the items, and while reexperiencing the unwanted memories technicians scan brain activity, allowing them to chart and record where the memories are located. The team of Lacuna technicians will use the information they have received from the patient to construct a map of the memory. They will then use this map to extract the memory from the patient's mind.

Following the map created specifically for every patient, that patient takes a sedative. A team then uses a device that systematically retriggers all the memories they have recorded. As they are retriggered, the targeted memories gradually dissolve while the device erases them. The procedure works on a reverse time-line, which means it begins with the most recent memories and goes backwards in time. This approach is designed to target the psychological core that every memory builds on. By eradicating the core, Lacuna technicians are able to make the entire memory dissolve. When the patient wakes from the surgery, they remember nothing.

In addition, Lacuna Inc. sends a letter to the friends and family of the patient, explaining that the patient is erasing the memory of a particular human and asking the recipients to never mention that human to the patient again.

[edit] Special Effect Depictions of the Memories

Throughout the film we see a wide range of special effect devices and camera work to depict both the destruction of Joel's memories as well as his transitions from one to another. These range from quite subtle to extremely dramatic:

• The picture quality and sound resolution of the memory simply deteriorates (one example being when Joel talks with his neighbor in the lobby of their apartment building).

• Subtle details fade from view - examples of this being when Clementine's name fades away from the Lacuna postcard that Joel has in his hand or when the books in the Barnes and Noble gradually turn white.

• In one case, time and perspective seems to "loop" (the scene where Joel tries to make up with Clementine after she stormed out of his apartment, Joel finds himself unable to get from one end of the street to another -- this also combines the elimination of details such as the displays of stores) Also in this scene, we repeatedly see reflections of the lamp in Joel's apartment floating in the air.

• Overt disintegration of the memories (examples of this include the car falling from the sky, the disappearance of a car that Joel and Clementine are in, the disappearance of a fence, and perhaps most elaborately, the falling apart of the beach house that Joel and Clementine were in).

• Vanishing of characters (Clementine fades out while in the car with Joel, she also is seemingly pulled away from him on the frozen Charles, she also transforms into a faceless woman in the deteriorated memory of Lacuna's offices); also, there is an elaborate sequence where Joel and Clementine run through a train station (from a memory of visiting her grandmother) and all the people around them "wink out".

• Cycling between the adult actors and their younger selves (when Joel recalls a humiliating memory of being forced by bullies to hit a dead bird with a hammer, the footage switches back and forth between young actors playing Joel and Clementine and Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey). Joel is apparently able to visualize Clementine's youthful appearance because he had seen a picture of her as that when they were still together.

• Scenes of the movie use a trompe-l'œil effect (French for trick of the eye), enabling the actors to be seen by the audience as life-sized, yet their characters are existing in a smaller world. Examples are when Joel and Clementine are in the kitchen sink, or when Joel hides from his mother/Clementine under the table in his memory as a child.

[edit] Deleted and moved scenes

The shooting script — which has been published as a book (ISBN 1-55704-610-7) — and early drafts contain a fair amount of material that was either left on the cutting room floor or never shot.

A major change that came in editing was that the scene in the beginning with Joel and Clementine on the frozen Charles (the second time they'd been there chronologically) got moved from near the end of the movie to the beginning. According to the Kaufman interview published with the shooting script, this was done to make sure the audience liked Clementine, as without it, their initial impression of her, based upon scenes from the end of Joel and Clem's first relationship, might have been too negative. The movie also begins well into the future, with the audience fully aware that Joel and Clementine's memories have been previously erased.

Dropped scenes included dialogue on the train, scenes with Joel and Naomi (the girlfriend he had before Clementine), Joel in the Lacuna office describing his negative feelings about Clementine in more detail, and scenes showing Joel and Clementine on their first "date". The dialogue from the deleted Lacuna office scene is used later, when he is listening to a tape of himself describing Clementine's personality flaws, and some of the dialog from their first "date" is used in the last flashback scene, where the beach house is crumbling around the two of them. In fact, much of the content of the film was moved around in editing. A fair amount of scenes were changed on-the-spot by director Michel Gondry, including scenes showing the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in the streets of Manhattan. Another dropped scene was one that took place in a bar where a very drunk Clementine tried to make Joel jealous by coming onto another man (which might have prompted Joel's claim in his taped interview with Mierzwiak that Clementine was very promiscuous).

Another deleted scene that appears in the Special two disc D.V.D. set is an extended scene in the doctor's office when Mary Svevo is listening to the tape of her file. Mary is saying in the tape why she should have the procedure done, especially after having to get a natal abortion.

[edit] Costumes, Props and Artwork

Nothing was sent to trash after the production of the movie was wrapped. And they are considered as works of "prop art".

Nearly all of the memorable and important costumes and props used in this movie are kept by two private collectors named Ozgur Cift and Shawn Shaffer of United States. Nearly all of the pieces survived after production, and now reside in private collections of individuals.

[edit] Awards and recognition

Kaufman, Gondry, and Bismuth won the 2005 Academy Award for best original screenplay for Eternal Sunshine. Winslet was also nominated for best actress but lost to Hilary Swank.

It was nominated for and has won various other awards, including:

• Australian Film Institute: Best Foreign Film
• BAFTA Film Awards: Best Editing (won, Valdís Óskarsdóttir), Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay (won), David Lean Award for Direction
• Boston Society of Film Critics Awards: Best Screenplay (won 2nd place)
• Czech Lions: Best Foreign Language Film
• César Award for Best Foreign Film
• Golden Globe Awards: Best Musical or Comedy, Best Actor (Musical or Comedy), Best Actress (Musical or Comedy), Best Screenplay
• Gotham Award: Best Film
• Grammy Award: Best Score Soundtrack Album
• London Critics Circle Film Awards: British Actress of the Year (won), Screenwriter of the Year (won)
• National Board of Review: Best Original Screenplay (won)
• Online Film Critics Society Awards: Best Actress (won), Best Director (won), Best Editing (won), Best Picture (won), Best Original Screenplay (won), Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score
• Screen Actors Guild Award: Best Actress
• Seattle Film Critics Awards: Best Original Screenplay (won)
• Toronto Film Critics Association Awards: Best Director (won), Best Screenplay (won)
• Writers Guild of America Award: Best Original Screenplay (won)

Roger Ebert commented, "Despite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, "Eternal Sunshine" has an emotional center, and that's what makes it work."[2]

Time Out London summed up their review by saying, "the formidable Gondry/ Kaufman/Carrey axis works marvel after marvel in expressing the bewildering beauty and existential horror of being trapped inside one's own addled mind, and in allegorising the self-preserving amnesia of a broken but hopeful heart."[3]

It's listed on the Internet Movie Database Top 250 (in the low 30s), and is the highest ranked 2004 film on the user-selected chart. Many critics, as well as many moviegoers, consider it to be the greatest film of 2004, and one of the best of the decade.^{[citation needed]} Many users on the 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" board at IMDb have gone on to state it being the best movie ever made.

In 2005, the website Arts & Faith ranked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind #98 on its list of "Most Spiritually Significant Films." [4]

In 2006, in issue 201 of Empire Magazine, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was voted #83 in their 201 Greatest Movies of All Time poll as voted for by the readers.[5]

Kate Winslet's performance as Clementine was included in Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time at #81.

[edit] Music and soundtrack

Main article: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (soundtrack)

The soundtrack album for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (soundtrack) was released by Hollywood Records on March 16, 2004.

The score was composed by Los Angeles musician Jon Brion. Other songs featured are from artists such as Jeff Lynne's E.L.O. ("Mr. Blue Sky" was featured in trailers and television spots but not used in the film), The Polyphonic Spree, The Willowz, and Don Nelson. Beck, in a collaboration with Jon Brion, provides a cover version of the Korgis' "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime".

Notably, many of the vocal songs either revolve around memories or the sun.

[edit] Music relating to the movie

The band Circa Survive have a song called "Meet Me In Montauk" on their latest album, Juturna (2005). The title comes from the line Clementine whispers in Joel's ear just before the last memory of her is erased. Most of the album has lyrics that seem to coincide with events in the movie.

The former bandmates of Blame Twilight recorded a song called "The Dining Dead" in reference to a scene from the film.

The band Bayside have a song entited "Montauk", in reference to the movie.

The band Breaking Benjamin co-wrote a song with The Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan called "Forget It", in reference to the movie.

[edit] Film setting and locations

The film is set largely in the New York City suburb of Rockville Centre and Montauk, Long Island, and in New York City, as well as having a memorable scene set on the Charles River in Boston.

It was filmed in and around Brooklyn, Manhattan, Montauk, Mount Vernon, Wainscott, and Yonkers, New York; also Bayonne and West Orange, New Jersey.

Residents of Rockville Centre were largely disappointed with the poor depiction of their village in the film.

The Barnes and Noble scenes were filmed at the Columbia University Bookstore.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] DVD

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is available in the U.S. in separate anamorphic widescreen and full screen editions as of September 28, 2004. Both widescreen and full screen editions carry English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, English DTS 5.1 Surround and French Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks.

A special 2-disc widescreen Collector's Edition DVD was released in the U.S. on January 4, 2005.

[edit] See also

• Memory
• Amnesia

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at the Internet Movie Database
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at Rotten Tomatoes
• Metacritic: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Promotional website for the fictional Lacuna Inc.
• First draft of the script, from a fan's ad-supported website
• Alexander Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard", from a University of Toronto website
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at the Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films list
• "The 'Quirky' New Wave" Alternate Takesde:Vergiss mein nicht!

es:Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind fr:Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind it:Se mi lasci ti cancello nl:Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ja:エターナル・サンシャイン pl:Zakochany bez pamięci pt:Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ru:Вечное сияние чистого разума (фильм) fi:Tahraton mieli sv:Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind tr:Sil Baştan (film)