Day 5 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind


Day 5                  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [2004]

Writer(s)                        Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry & Pierre Bismuth
Director                          Michel Gondry
Cinematography           Ellen Kuras
Music composition       Jon Brion
Leads                               Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson.
Production                     Anonymous Content, This is That

IMDb                                    8.3/10
Rotten Tomatoes             93%

This has been on my watch list for a long, long time and it’s the best film I have seen for a long time too. I was hooked from the very beginning, when Joel (Carrey) first catches the train out to Montauk and we hear his thoughts about women and strangers and ‘sand is over-rated. It’s just tiny little rocks’. Genius. Saying things that are so obvious and relatable but films often fail to mention. It is all about a couple Joel and Clementine (brilliantly played by Winslet) who fight and erase each other from their memories with the help of some type of doctor (Ruffalo, Wood, Dunst and Wilkinson). It tosses and turns and it’s hard to tell what is reality and what is in Joel’s mind. It is filmed brilliantly and Gondry and Kuras take us on a journey of déjà vu and romance. Carrey is excellent in this more serious role and Winslet shows her class playing wacky Clementine to perfection. The side-story with the memory-erasers is also intriguing in itself. One of my top ten films of all time, and probably in many other people’s.

Acting                             4 / 4
Writing                           4 / 4
Cinematography       3.5 / 4
Music                             3 / 4

HWF rating              4 / 4