Archive of films Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind / Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

USA
2003, 108 min

Section: Horizons
Year: 2004

This consistently constructed narrative can be characterised as a morality piece, warning people against foregoing the experience of pain. Joel gets rid of the festering memories of his treacherous love but at the same time dangerously wipes from his memory other layers of the past.

Synopsis

The life of the lonely and timid Joel fundamentally changes when he meets the eccentric and temperamental Clementine. She is weird in many ways and successfully entices Joel to crazy ventures. She is also unstable and volatile and one day decides to get rid of Joel and start again. To this purpose she submits herself to having her memory expunged in an experimental clinic, and her attempt is so successful that the grief-stricken Joel seizes the same solution. He however is less successful; this time the doctor lets the intervention get out of hand, and the damage is made worse by his assistant who instead of carefully monitoring the activity of the client´s brain, allows him to be led into wild erotic imaginings. The director in a masterly fashion upsets the time and space continuity and replaces it with the associative linking of fragments from different layers of memory. He reconstructs the relationship and repeatedly returns to certain experiences, many of them deformed in their dependence on Joel´s wrought-up emotions.

About the director

Michel Gondry (b. 1963, Versailles, France). As a child he wanted to be a painter and an inventor. He developed his interest in printmaking in the 1980s at art school in Paris. He also got to know the people with whom he founded the pop rock group Oui Oui. Before they broke up in 1992 they made two albums and a number of singles. Gondry was the drummer in the band and filmed it several times, which resulted in a commission from Björk. He made six films for her and others - for example, the group Massive Attack. His commercials (Air France, Coca Cola, Levi´s, Polaroid, Smirnoff) have won top awards. His feature film debut was the comedy Human Nature (2001), on which he worked with scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman.

Contacts

Hollywood Classic Entertainment
Psohlavců 8, 147 00, Praha 4
Czech Republic
Tel: +420 226 224 111
Fax: +420 226 224 110
E-mail: [email protected]
www: www.hce.cz

Universal Pictures Group
65 Bleecker Street, 3rd Floor, 10012, New York
United States of America
E-mail: [email protected]
www: http://www.universalpictures.com

About the film

Color, 35 mm

Section:	Horizons

Director:	Michel Gondry
Screenplay:	Charlie Kaufman
Dir. of Photography:	Ellen Kuras
Music:	Jon Brion
Editor:	Valdis Óskarsdóttir
Producer:	Anthony Bregman, Steve Golin
Production:	Focus Features, koprodukce / co-production: Anonymous Content, Blue Ruin, This Is That
Cast:	Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson
Contact:	Hollywood Classic Entertainment, Universal Pictures Group

www:	www.eternalsunshine.com