Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless mind: Movie review( 4/5)

This movie deserves more than 4 stars, just for the amount of cerebration put behind this movie, but I’ll hold more than 4 as to be perfect and perfection is not a limit that can be easily reached at.

Eternal Sunshine comes from Charlie Kaufman, the doyen of the ‘mind’ movies, a subject that has been the leitmotif of his career. He is revered for the great creations like “Confessions of Dangerous mind” and “Being John Malkovich”.

This movie is about mind and its power. It shows memories as bits and things which may be or can be erased or retrieved and retained.

It is a story of two young minds, Joe Barish (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) , imbrangled in the cobwebs of life, “fucked up people looking for their own peace of mind” as the movie puts it. They fall in love with each other, but as with most
contemporary relationships, there’s also goes through a bit of tumult.

Clementine shown as an impulsive girl decides to erase Joe from her mind to assuage her pain. Joe is shocked when he discovers this and decides to go through the same process. However, during the erasing process when Joe goes down then memory lane, he finds himself still in love with her. He fights his mind and the erasing procedure to save Clementine, hide her in the maze of his brain.

When they finally discover what they went through, it helps them understand their relationship better. Understanding each other, which is probably the key to any relationship?

And How Does he succeed if he ever does? How do they meet again and remember each other? See and find out.

The title of comes from a poem by Alexander Pope. The lines are….

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

I can’t come out with an exegesis, but I am particularly impressed by the second line….What would happen to world if it forgets the bad ….or the good…

The movie scores copiously for its brilliant screenplay and dialogues. Dialogues and situations are very carefully planned. On the acting front Jim Carrey is good, segues quite well in to the schmaltzy, different from his usual roles which are full of guffaws. Incidentally Jim was also shooting for Bruce Almighty during this time. Kate Winslet , the sexiest Mom in UK( Hmm...could not resist to say that) is equally good. Kirsten Dunst impresses in a small but a good performance.


In all a great movie which you would love to watch on a Sunday evening when you are quite relaxed.

One last mention for the background score , the movie has an old hindi movie song playing in background during a scene.


Cast Details Here