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Movie of the Week #4 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
This is the fourth movie we discuss of Academy Award Winners. It won for Best Original Screenplay and Kate Winslet was nominated for Best Actress.
Did the movie deserve its nominations and awards? Feel free to add any thoughts, opinions, reflections, analysis or whatever comments related to this film.
The rest of the schedule is:
- 27th of November: West Side Story (2021)
I always add stupid backstory to these comments. And I'm gonna do it again here.
So when I was 14 I took a road trip to Florida, which took about two days. Because I started getting into movies I torrented a bunch of them and burned them on blank CD's. A couple of them were from this WatchMojo video which is what introduced me to these movies for the first time. Punch-Drunk Love, In Bruges, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I watched all three of these for the first time on the road trip.
I instantly fell in love with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind even if it took me a little bit to get it. And I immediately began showing it to everyone that I could. For a while it was my favorite movie. I was a teenage boy at the time, so I was infatuated with Clementine. It was really the first time I was introduced with concepts of existentialism and relationships.
What an insane cast this has. Mark Ruffalo back when he was the king of romcoms, a post-Spiderman Kirsten Dunst, a post-LOTR Elijah Wood. I think it is Kate Winslet's best performance, I think it is Jim Carrey's best performance.
In terms of Oscar stuff, it would have been nominated for Best Picture under the current rules. It's also the only movie to win Original Screenplay without a Picture nomination in however many decades.
I actually don't mind the actual Best Picture line-up this year. The worst nominee is Ray without a doubt, but I love Million Dollar Baby, Sideways, The Aviator, and I even like Finding Neverland. For lead actor however, I would have preferred DiCaprio or even Depp win from the actual nominees and I think that both Giamatti and Carrey being snubbed has aged poorly.
After Man on the Moon, I think we were all waiting for Jim Carrey to take his dramatic acting chops even further without doing The Number 23 -- Eternal Sunshine was the perfect balance for me.
Gondry was the perfect writer/director to bring this performance out, too. Gondry and Carrey have worked together quite a bit, but I think they both shine with heavier material like Kidding, which kind of flew under the radar with normal people.
Its funny to compare this against the legacy of the Best Picture category for the year:
For me, Eternal Sunshine absolutely destroys these relatively forgotten films. Well, not forgotten... but how often do you end up at someone's house to rewatch Ray? Best Picture is rarely the best picture and the 2005 Oscars are a prime example of this.
Its also worth checking out Gondry's The Science of Sleep (2006).
Million Dollar Baby is still highly regarded - at least for me, though Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is definitely a contender for best picture that year as well.
Sideways is also still highly regarded. I will say that Million Dollar Baby is my favorite Best Picture winner of the 21st century.
For me, this movie will always sit in my mind. From the "WTF is going on?" start to the decent representation of experiencing a mind being dissected, to basking in the warmth of a relationship - this movie kept a very special place in my heart. To me (when I first started watching it) this movie was in line with A Clockwork Orange or Brazil in that it is well executed and there are bits where you're left wondering 'how did they do that? Especially on a lower budget' like scenes where Jim Carrey is up to his neck in sand in the back of a car or it goes from a library to a home.
One guy who commented here really struck it on the head that this movie had people who were either past their peak but doing something very different, or it was exposing people who were going to be much bigger. The only thing for me that has detracted from it over time is that it was a movie (one of the earlier ones) to romanticize the 'manic pixie dream girl' and that Gondry never really was able to recreate the magic of this (the Science of Sleep is OK but really highlights the flaws of his style).
Still, it's always on my top 10-20 list of movies.
When my parents took me to see The Mask I instantly became a Jim Carrey fan. With both The Truman Show and Man on the Moon he showed he could do more than being just a rubberface. However, in terms of acting, I don't think he does anything extraordinary here. It is the script that elevates this movie to among the best science fiction movies.
I don't think I have seen this film since it released and I could mostly remember the basic concept and the tragic love story, but I had forgotten how trippy the memory sequences was. Those were really well done with some convincing effect shots as well. The emotional impact didn't hit as hard when I knew where everything was going with Joel and Clementine.
My praise for this movie is how it is science fiction done right. I love science fiction, but many science fiction movies are crap. They are decades behind concepts and ideas the genre provides in written form, and often poorly executed. The best science fiction movies also tends to be based on a novel or short story, with this being a notable exception. A single invention is introduced to our world and we just let the consequences go from that. In this movie it exists in this little microcosm of the city and we don't explore the ramifications for the greater society with such a technology, but that would have been a total different film. I think it works well on letting this concept develop within just this small group of people.
There are many philosophical themes explored here with regards to how memory shapes who we are and how it likely won't work to simply erase stuff and stay sane, and while the ending may seem like a happy ending on the surface, I think the point is that they will just repeat the pattern because they refuse to learn and reflect from their breakup.
I really wish more movies like this were made. The only one I can think of that has a similar feel is Her from 2013.