Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind


Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a 2004 American romantic drama film directed by Michel Gondry and written by Charlie Kaufman from a story by Gondry, Kaufman, and Pierre Bismuth. It stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as a couple who undergo memory erasure after they break up. Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood and Tom Wilkinson appear in supporting roles. The title of the film is a quotation from the 1717 poem Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope. It uses elements of psychological drama and science fiction and a nonlinear narrative to explore the nature of memory and love.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was released in theaters in the United States by Focus Features on March 19, 2004, to widespread acclaim from critics, who praised the script and direction. The film was a box office success, grossing $74 million on a $20 million budget, and was named by the American Film Institute one of the Top 10 Films of 2004. At the 77th Academy Awards, Bismuth, Gondry and Kaufman won Best Original Screenplay, and Winslet received a nomination for Best Actress.
The film has been named by several publications as one of the greatest of the 21st century and gained a cult following. It was the inspiration behind several music projects, such as Jay Electronica's 2007 piece "Eternal Sunshine ", Jhené Aiko's 2014 track "Spotless Mind" and Ariana Grande's 2024 album Eternal Sunshine.

Plot

Joel Barish discovers that his estranged girlfriend, Clementine Kruczynski, has undergone a procedure to have her memories of him erased by the suburban Long Island firm Lacuna. Heartbroken, he decides to undergo the same procedure. In preparation, he records a tape recounting his memories of their volatile relationship.
The Lacuna employees work on Joel's brain as he sleeps in his apartment so that he will wake up with no memory of the procedure. One employee, Patrick, leaves to see Clementine; since her procedure, he has been using Clementine's memories of Joel as a guide to seduce her. While the procedure runs on Joel's brain, the technician, Stan, and the secretary, Mary, take drugs, party, and have sex.
Joel re-experiences his memories of Clementine in reverse chronological order as they are erased, starting with their last fight. As he reaches earlier, happier memories, he realizes that he does not want to forget her. His mental projection of Clementine suggests that he hides her in memories that do not involve her. This halts the procedure, but Stan calls his boss, Howard, who arrives and restarts it. Joel comes to his last remaining memory of Clementine: the day they first met, on a beach in Montauk. As the memory crumbles around them, Clementine tells Joel to meet her in Montauk.
In Joel's apartment, Mary tries to impress Howard through their mutual interest in poetry by reciting a verse from Eloisa to Abelard. While Stan is outside, she tells Howard she is in love with him and they kiss. Howard's wife arrives and sees them through the window. Enraged, she tells Howard to tell Mary the truth: Mary and Howard had previously had an affair, and Mary had her memories of it erased. Disgusted, Mary steals the Lacuna records and mails them to the patients, including Joel and Clementine.
Joel wakes up on Valentine's Day with his memories of Clementine erased. He impulsively takes the Long Island Rail Road to Montauk and calls in sick to work. He accidentally meets Clementine on the train ride home; they are drawn to one another, and go on a date to the frozen Charles River in Boston. Joel drives Clementine home and Patrick sees the two of them, realizing they have found each other again. Joel and Clementine receive their Lacuna records from Mary and listen to their tapes together. They are shocked by the bitter memories they had of each other and almost separate again, but agree to try again.

Cast

  • Jim Carrey as Joel Barish: A bookish introvert who enters a two-year relationship with Clementine Kruczynski. After their relationship ends, Clementine erases Joel from her memory, and he erases her from his mind in response. Charlie Kaufman depicted Joel with some of his own personality traits. Producers cast Carrey against type for his role as Joel, selecting him for his everyday appearance, as well as his comedic ability. According to Gondry, this was because "It's hard to be funny. It's far easier to take someone really funny and bring them down than do the opposite." To induce Carrey, an actor who typically portrayed high-energy roles, to portray a restrained character, Gondry would not allow him to improvise, a restriction he did not place on the other cast members. Gondry also put Carrey off balance by giving misleading orders or by rolling the camera at the wrong time. Gondry believed this would make Carrey forget what he should do to be Joel, allowing him to go in character. In the 2017 Netflix documentary Jim & Andy, Carrey mentions a conversation with Gondry one year before shooting began for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, shortly after Carrey had a breakup with an unspecified woman. Gondry saw that Carrey's emotional state at the time was "so beautiful, so broken" that he asked him to stay that way for one year to fit the character. In the documentary, Carrey commented, "That's how fucked up this business is." Nicolas Cage was Gondry's original choice to play Joel, but Cage was unavailable as he was in high demand from independent directors after his performance in Leaving Las Vegas.
  • Kate Winslet as Clementine Kruczynski: A spontaneous extrovert who, after breaking up with him after a two-year relationship, erases Joel Barish from her mind. Producers cast Winslet against type for her part as Clementine, as Winslet had previously featured heavily in period pieces. She received the role after she was the only actress to offer criticism on the script instead of pandering to the writers. After another actress won an Oscar, the studio attempted to make Gondry use her instead of Winslet for the role of Clementine, but Gondry threatened to walk from the project if that occurred. During filming, Gondry took Winslet to a separate room to coach her, and she wore wigs instead of dyeing her hair. Some commentators note how Clementine's character criticizes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl stock character several years before film critic Nathan Rabin coined the phrase. Most commentators discuss one particular example to demonstrate this criticism, wherein Clementine warns Joel she is flawed: "Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours." With her impulsiveness, emotional intensity, alcohol consumption, turbulent relationships, reckless behavior, and hasty idealization or devaluation of Joel, Clementine seems to exhibit traits of borderline personality disorder, although it is not clear whether Kaufman wrote her character with this specific diagnosis in mind. Gondry had earlier thought of casting Björk for the role of Clementine. She feared she would be emotionally affected and rejected the invitation after reading the script. Winona Ryder also met with Gondry for the role.
  • Kirsten Dunst as Mary Svevo: The receptionist for Lacuna who, while dating Stan Fink, has a crush on Howard Mierzwiak. While erasing Joel's memory, Howard's wife catches her kissing Howard. Howard's wife reveals Mary previously had a relationship with Howard, which Howard erased from her mind. She reacts to this information by quitting her job and mailing Lacuna's company records to its customers. In the script, Mary and Howard's relationship resulted in an unplanned pregnancy, leading to Howard pressuring Mary into an abortion, which Howard also erased from her memory.
  • Mark Ruffalo as Stan Fink: A technician for Lacuna who is in a relationship with Mary Svevo until the reveal of her previous relationship with Howard Mierzwiak. Ruffalo received the role of Stan after providing an "unexpected take on the role" to Gondry when he suggested Stan be a fan of the Clash and resemble Joe Strummer.
  • Tom Wilkinson as Dr. Howard Mierzwiak: Howard runs Lacuna. Before the film's events, he had an affair with Mary, which ended with the relationship's erasure from her mind. Wilkinson reportedly did not enjoy the shooting of the film and clashed with Gondry.
  • Elijah Wood as Patrick Wertz: Patrick is a technician for Lacuna who enters a relationship with Clementine by imitating Joel. They break up when Joel and Clementine begin dating for the second time. Seth Rogen auditioned for the role.
  • Jane Adams as Carrie Eakin: Joel's female friend. She is in a troubled relationship with Rob Eakin.
  • David Cross as Rob Eakin: Joel's friend. In a troubled relationship with Carrie Eakin.
  • Thomas Jay Ryan as Frank: Joel Barish's neighbor
  • Deirdre O'Connell as Hollis Mierzwiak: Howard's wife
  • Debbon Ayer as Mrs. Barish: Joel's mother
  • Ellen Pompeo as Naomi, Joel's girlfriend

    Production

Development

The concept of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind came from conversations between director Michel Gondry and co-writer Pierre Bismuth in 1998. The pair had met and become friends in the early 1980s during Gondry's drumming career in the French pop group Oui Oui. Bismuth had conceived of the idea of erasing certain people from people's minds in response to a friend complaining about her boyfriend; when he asked her if she would erase that boyfriend from her memory, she said yes. Bismuth originally planned to conduct an art experiment involving sending cards to people saying someone they knew had erased the card's recipient from their memory. When he mentioned this to Gondry, they developed it into a story based on the situations that would arise if it were scientifically possible. Bismuth never carried out his experiment.
Gondry approached writer Charlie Kaufman with this concept, and they developed it into a short pitch. While the writers did not believe the concept was marketable, a small bidding war began over the idea. Steve Golin of Propaganda Films purchased it on June 12, 1998, for a low seven-figure sum. Kaufman, who was responsible for writing the screenplay, did not begin immediately, instead opting to suspend writing while he was working on Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Human Nature, the last of which Gondry directed as his directorial debut.
During this time, filmmaker Christopher Nolan released Memento, which similarly deals with memory. Due to the similarities, Kaufman became worried and tried to pull out of the project, but Golin made him complete it. During writing, the pitch's ownership changed several times resulting in Kaufman not having to deal with the studios until the end of the scriptwriting process. The final script made the studios nervous.
Kaufman did not want to make the film a thriller and wanted to downplay the science fiction aspects of memory erasure, focusing on the relationship. He had an "enormous struggle" while writing the script, particularly encountering two problems: showing "the memories, Joel's reactions to the memories, and Joel interacting with Clementine outside of the memories in the memories," and the fact that characters could refer in later scenes to already erased memories.
Kaufman resolved the first problem by making Joel lucid and able to comment on his memories and solved the second by making the memories degrade instead of immediately erasing, with complete erasure occurring at awakening. Kaufman's original name for the screenplay was 18 words long, as he had wanted a title that "you couldn't possibly fit on a marquee." He eventually decided on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a title originating from the 1717 poem Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope.
Alain Resnais's Je t'aime, je t'aime has been cited as an influence on the film.