eternal sunshine of the spotless mind movie poster

With its slippery shifts between reality and distorted memories, Eternal Sunshine required a look that could blend location shoot authenticity with unpredictable flashes of whimsy. However, Gondry was eager to depart from the hermetic, studio-bound experience he’d had on a previous Kaufman project, Human Nature. The film’s director of photography, Ellen Kuras, ASC, notes that director Michel Gondry, whose acclaimed music videos “often deal with the morphing of time and space,” was ideally suited to visualize a story whose primary setting is the boundless realm of its protagonist’s memory. This article originally appeared in AC, April 2004. Some images may be additional or alternate. But when Joel accidentally becomes lucid during the procedure and begins to surreally re-experience all of his vivid moments with Clementine, he realizes he has made a grievous mistake, and struggles to mentally preserve the remaining details of his bittersweet love affair. Providing this dubious treatment is Lacuna Inc., whose funky young technicians identify and delete their clients’ troublesome recollections.

Thus, it might be surprising to some that his latest tale, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, follows the universally familiar romantic pattern of “boy meets girl, boy loses girl” - that is, until the point in the story where “boy arranges to have all memory of girl erased.”Įternal Sunshine tells the tragicomic story of Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet), a loving yet hopelessly mismatched couple who, after breaking up, decide to have their painful memories of each other permanently removed. The plots of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s bizarre movies ( Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) have always defied easy description. At top, distraught Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) frantically attempts to stop the process which he's already put into motion.

Shot by Ellen Kuras, ASC and directed by Michel Gondry, this innovative tragicomic drama explores a man’s fight to retain his romantic memories.