Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an Academy-Award winning 2004 American romance film by French director Michel Gondry. The film uses a science fiction element to explore the nature of memory and love. Opening in North America on March 19, 2004, the movie grossed more than US$70 million worldwide.

It is directed by Michel Gondry, who worked on the story with Charlie Kaufman and Pierre Bismuth, a French performance artist. Kaufman and Bismuth won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2005. The film stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet and features Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson, Elijah Wood, Jane Adams, and David Cross. The movie's title is taken from the poem Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope which was the story of a tragic love affair.

Emotionally withdrawn Joel Barish (Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Winslet), a dysfunctional free spirit, strike up a relationship on a Long Island Rail Road train from Montauk to Rockville Centre. They are inexplicably drawn to each other, despite their radically different personalities.

Although they do not realize it at the time, they are former lovers now separated after two years together. After a nasty fight, Clementine stormed out of Joel's apartment and impulsively hired a New York firm -- Lacuna, Inc. -- to erase all memories of their relationship. Upon learning of this, Joel was devastated and decided to undergo the procedure himself. However, while unconscious and having these same memories erased, he rebelled, realizing he wanted to hold on to his memories of Clementine after all.

Much of the film takes place in Joel's mind as he struggles to preserve at least some memory of his love for Clementine. We watch their love and courtship go in reverse. The memories are slowly erased while Joel tries his best to resist the procedure and hide inside his own mind.

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 an affair 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 relationship.

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 gave to Lacuna, as part of the procedure, 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.

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Well. This seems like a great movie. How on earth did I miss it??? So, I'm going to try catch this one.

Is it a good idea to erase a bad love affair? Would it make one happier not remembering that heartache? Or is it sadder not to have memories of those you've loved before?