🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 97 (from laksa042)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa097.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-2004\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-2004\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-2004","crawl_time":1776160623,"first_indexed_time":1509837472,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,rogerebert!www,\/reviews\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-2004 s443","src_root_hash":"7554834309041482497","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind movie review review:","meta_descriptions":["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"],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! \nThe world forgetting, by the world forgot. \nEternal sunshine of the spotless mind! \nEach pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.\n— Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard”\nIt’s one thing to wash that man right outta your hair, and another to erase him from your mind. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” imagines a scientific procedure that can obliterate whole fields of memory — so that, for example, Clementine can forget that she ever met Joel, let alone fell in love with him. “Is there any danger of brain damage?” the inventor of the process is asked. “Well,” he allows, in his most kindly voice, “technically speaking, the procedure\nis\nbrain damage.”\nThe movie is a labyrinth created by the screenwriter\nCharlie Kaufman\n, whose “\nBeing John Malkovich\n” and “\nAdaptation\n” were neorealism compared to this.\nJim Carrey\nand\nKate Winslet\nplay Joel and Clementine, in a movie that sometimes feels like an endless series of aborted Meet Cutes. That they lose their minds while all about them are keeping theirs is a tribute to their skill; they center their characters so that we can actually care about them even when they’re constantly losing track of their own lives. (“My journal,” Joel observes oddly, “is … just blank.”)\nThe movie is a radical example of Maze Cinema, that style in which the story coils back upon itself, redefining everything and then throwing it up in the air and redefining it again. To reconstruct it in chronological order would be cheating, but I will cheat: At some point before the technical beginning of the movie, Joel and Clementine were in love, and their affair ended badly, and Clementine went to Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (\nTom Wilkinson\n) at Lacuna Inc., to have Joel erased from her mind.\nDiscovering this, Joel in revenge applies to have\nhis\nmemories of\nher\nerased. But the funny thing about love is, it can survive the circumstances of its ending; we remember good times better than bad ones, and Joel decides in mid-process that maybe he would like to remember Clementine after all. He tries to squirrel away some of his memories in hidden corners of his mind, but the process is implacable.\nIf you think this makes the movie sound penetrable, you have no idea. As the movie opens, Joel is seized with an inexplicable compulsion to ditch work and take the train to Montauk, and on the train he meets Clementine. For all they know they have never seen each other before, but somehow there’s a connection, a distant shadow of deja vu. During the course of the film, which moves freely, dizzyingly, forward and backward in time, they will each experience fragmentary versions of relationships they had, might have had, or might be having.\nMeanwhile, back at the Lacuna head office, there are more complications.\nLacuna (\nwww.lacunainc.com\n) seems to be a prosperous and growing firm (it advertises a Valentine’s Day Special), but in reality, it consists only of the avuncular Dr. Mierzwiak and his team of assistants: Stan (\nMark Ruffalo\n), Patrick (\nElijah Wood\n) and Mary (\nKirsten Dunst\n). There are innumerable complications involving them, which I will not describe because it would not only be unfair to reveal the plot but probably impossible.\n“Eternal Sunshine” has been directed by\nMichel Gondry\n, a music video veteran whose first feature, “\nHuman Nature\n” (2002), also written by Kaufman, had a lunacy that approached genius and then veered away. In that film,\nTim Robbins\nstarred as an overtrained child who devotes his adult life to teaching table manners to white mice. The scene where the male mouse politely pulls out the chair for the female to sit down is without doubt in a category of its own.\nDespite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, “Eternal Sunshine” has an emotional center, and that’s what makes it work. Although Joel and Clementine ping-pong through various stages of romance and reality, what remains constant is the human need for love and companionship, and the human compulsion to keep seeking it, despite all odds. It may also be true that Joel and Clementine, who seem to be such opposites (he is shy and compulsive, she is extroverted and even wild), might be a good match for each other, and so if they keep on meeting they will keep on falling in love, and Lacuna Inc. may have to be replaced with the Witness Protection Program.\nFor Jim Carrey, this is another successful attempt, like “\nThe Truman Show\n” and the underrated “\nThe Majestic\n,” to extend himself beyond screwball comedy. He has an everyman appeal, and here he dials down his natural energy to give us a man who is so lonely and needy that a fragment of memory is better than none at all. Kate Winslet is the right foil for him, exasperated by Joel’s peculiarities while paradoxically fond of them. The shenanigans back at Lacuna belong on a different level of reality, but even there, secrets are revealed that are oddly touching.\nKaufman’s mission seems to be the penetration of the human mind. His characters journeyed into the skull of\nJohn Malkovich\n, and there is a good possibility that two of them were inhabiting the same body in “Adaptation.” But both of those movies were about characters trying to achieve something outside themselves. The insight of “Eternal Sunshine” is that, at the end of the day, our memories are all we really have, and when they’re gone, we’re gone.","attrs_markdown":"[![Roger Ebert Logo](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/wp-content\/themes\/roger-ebert\/source\/images\/roger-ebert-logo.svg)](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/)   [![Search Icon](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/wp-content\/themes\/roger-ebert\/source\/images\/search-thin.svg)](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/search)   [Signup](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/prime)\n\n- [Movie Reviews](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews)\n- [Great Movies](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/great-movies)\n- [TV\/Streaming](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/streaming)\n- [Interviews](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/interviews)\n- [Collections](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/collections)\n- [Festivals & Awards](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/festivals-and-awards)\n- [Contributors](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/contributors)\n\n[Reviews](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews)\n\n# Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind\n![star rating](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/wp-content\/themes\/roger-ebert\/source\/images\/stars-fill.svg) ![star rating](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/wp-content\/themes\/roger-ebert\/source\/images\/stars.svg)\n\n[Drama](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/genre\/drama)\n\n108 minutes  ‧ R  ‧ 2004\n\n[Roger Ebert](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/contributors\/roger-ebert)\n\nMarch 19, 2004\n\n5 min read\n\n![](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Eternal-Sunshine-of-the-Spotless-Mind.jpg)\n\nClementine (Kate Winslet) and Joel (Jim Carrey) are driven by an attraction that continues even when memories of each other are erased in \"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.\"\n\n**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.**   **— Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard”**\n\nIt’s one thing to wash that man right outta your hair, and another to erase him from your mind. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” imagines a scientific procedure that can obliterate whole fields of memory — so that, for example, Clementine can forget that she ever met Joel, let alone fell in love with him. “Is there any danger of brain damage?” the inventor of the process is asked. “Well,” he allows, in his most kindly voice, “technically speaking, the procedure **is** brain damage.”\n\nThe movie is a labyrinth created by the screenwriter [Charlie Kaufman](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/charlie-kaufman), whose “[Being John Malkovich](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/being-john-malkovich-1999)” and “[Adaptation](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/great-movie-adaptation-2002)” were neorealism compared to this. [Jim Carrey](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/jim-carrey) and [Kate Winslet](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/kate-winslet) play Joel and Clementine, in a movie that sometimes feels like an endless series of aborted Meet Cutes. That they lose their minds while all about them are keeping theirs is a tribute to their skill; they center their characters so that we can actually care about them even when they’re constantly losing track of their own lives. (“My journal,” Joel observes oddly, “is … just blank.”)\n\nThe movie is a radical example of Maze Cinema, that style in which the story coils back upon itself, redefining everything and then throwing it up in the air and redefining it again. To reconstruct it in chronological order would be cheating, but I will cheat: At some point before the technical beginning of the movie, Joel and Clementine were in love, and their affair ended badly, and Clementine went to Dr. Howard Mierzwiak ([Tom Wilkinson](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/tom-wilkinson)) at Lacuna Inc., to have Joel erased from her mind.\n\nDiscovering this, Joel in revenge applies to have **his** memories of **her** erased. But the funny thing about love is, it can survive the circumstances of its ending; we remember good times better than bad ones, and Joel decides in mid-process that maybe he would like to remember Clementine after all. He tries to squirrel away some of his memories in hidden corners of his mind, but the process is implacable.\n\nIf you think this makes the movie sound penetrable, you have no idea. As the movie opens, Joel is seized with an inexplicable compulsion to ditch work and take the train to Montauk, and on the train he meets Clementine. For all they know they have never seen each other before, but somehow there’s a connection, a distant shadow of deja vu. During the course of the film, which moves freely, dizzyingly, forward and backward in time, they will each experience fragmentary versions of relationships they had, might have had, or might be having.\n\nMeanwhile, back at the Lacuna head office, there are more complications.\n\nLacuna (**www.lacunainc.com**) seems to be a prosperous and growing firm (it advertises a Valentine’s Day Special), but in reality, it consists only of the avuncular Dr. Mierzwiak and his team of assistants: Stan ([Mark Ruffalo](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/mark-ruffalo)), Patrick ([Elijah Wood](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/elijah-wood)) and Mary ([Kirsten Dunst](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/kirsten-dunst)). There are innumerable complications involving them, which I will not describe because it would not only be unfair to reveal the plot but probably impossible.\n\n“Eternal Sunshine” has been directed by [Michel Gondry](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/michel-gondry), a music video veteran whose first feature, “[Human Nature](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/human-nature-2002)” (2002), also written by Kaufman, had a lunacy that approached genius and then veered away. In that film, [Tim Robbins](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/tim-robbins) starred as an overtrained child who devotes his adult life to teaching table manners to white mice. The scene where the male mouse politely pulls out the chair for the female to sit down is without doubt in a category of its own.\n\nDespite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, “Eternal Sunshine” has an emotional center, and that’s what makes it work. Although Joel and Clementine ping-pong through various stages of romance and reality, what remains constant is the human need for love and companionship, and the human compulsion to keep seeking it, despite all odds. It may also be true that Joel and Clementine, who seem to be such opposites (he is shy and compulsive, she is extroverted and even wild), might be a good match for each other, and so if they keep on meeting they will keep on falling in love, and Lacuna Inc. may have to be replaced with the Witness Protection Program.\n\nFor Jim Carrey, this is another successful attempt, like “[The Truman Show](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/the-truman-show-1998)” and the underrated “[The Majestic](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/the-majestic-2001),” to extend himself beyond screwball comedy. He has an everyman appeal, and here he dials down his natural energy to give us a man who is so lonely and needy that a fragment of memory is better than none at all. Kate Winslet is the right foil for him, exasperated by Joel’s peculiarities while paradoxically fond of them. The shenanigans back at Lacuna belong on a different level of reality, but even there, secrets are revealed that are oddly touching.\n\nKaufman’s mission seems to be the penetration of the human mind. His characters journeyed into the skull of [John Malkovich](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/john-malkovich), and there is a good possibility that two of them were inhabiting the same body in “Adaptation.” But both of those movies were about characters trying to achieve something outside themselves. The insight of “Eternal Sunshine” is that, at the end of the day, our memories are all we really have, and when they’re gone, we’re gone.\n\nNow streaming on:\n\n[Powered by ![JustWatch](https:\/\/widget.justwatch.com\/assets\/JW_logo_black_10px.svg)](https:\/\/www.justwatch.com\/)\n\n![](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Roger-Ebert-1.jpg)\n\n##### [Roger Ebert](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/contributors\/roger-ebert)\nRoger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.\n\n#### Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind\n[Drama](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/genre\/drama)\n\n![star rating](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/wp-content\/themes\/roger-ebert\/source\/images\/stars-fill.svg) ![star rating](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/wp-content\/themes\/roger-ebert\/source\/images\/stars.svg)\n\n108 minutes  ‧ R  ‧ 2004\n\n![](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Eternal-Sunshine-of-the-Spotless-Mind.jpg)\n\n#### Cast\n- [Elijah Wood](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/elijah-wood) as Patrick\n- [Tom Wilkinson](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/tom-wilkinson) as Dr. Howard Mierzwiak\n- [Kirsten Dunst](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/kirsten-dunst) as Mary\n- [Jane Adams](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/jane-adams) as Carrie\n- [Jim Carrey](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/jim-carrey) as Joel Barish\n- [David Cross](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/david-cross) as Rob\n- [Kate Winslet](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/kate-winslet) as Clementine Kruczynski\n- [Thomas Jay Ryan](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/thomas-jay-ryan) as Frank\n- [Mark Ruffalo](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/mark-ruffalo) as Stan\n- [Gerry Robert Byrne](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/gerry-robert-byrne) as Train Conductor\n\n- #### Written by\n  - [Charlie Kaufman](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/charlie-kaufman)\n- #### Directed by\n  - [Michel Gondry](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/michel-gondry)\n\n#### Leave a comment\nPlease enable JavaScript to view the  [comments powered by Disqus.](https:\/\/disqus.com\/?ref_noscript)\n\n***\n#### Now playing\n[![Noah Kahan: Out of 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procedure that can obliterate whole fields of memory — so that, for example, Clementine can forget that she ever met Joel, let alone fell in love with him. “Is there any danger of brain damage?” the inventor of the process is asked. “Well,” he allows, in his most kindly voice, “technically speaking, the procedure **is** brain damage.”\n\nThe movie is a labyrinth created by the screenwriter [Charlie Kaufman](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/charlie-kaufman), whose “[Being John Malkovich](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/being-john-malkovich-1999)” and “[Adaptation](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/great-movie-adaptation-2002)” were neorealism compared to this. [Jim Carrey](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/jim-carrey) and [Kate Winslet](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/kate-winslet) play Joel and Clementine, in a movie that sometimes feels like an endless series of aborted Meet Cutes. That they lose their minds while all about them are keeping theirs is a tribute to their skill; they center their characters so that we can actually care about them even when they’re constantly losing track of their own lives. (“My journal,” Joel observes oddly, “is … just blank.”)\n\nThe movie is a radical example of Maze Cinema, that style in which the story coils back upon itself, redefining everything and then throwing it up in the air and redefining it again. To reconstruct it in chronological order would be cheating, but I will cheat: At some point before the technical beginning of the movie, Joel and Clementine were in love, and their affair ended badly, and Clementine went to Dr. Howard Mierzwiak ([Tom Wilkinson](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/tom-wilkinson)) at Lacuna Inc., to have Joel erased from her mind.\n\nDiscovering this, Joel in revenge applies to have **his** memories of **her** erased. But the funny thing about love is, it can survive the circumstances of its ending; we remember good times better than bad ones, and Joel decides in mid-process that maybe he would like to remember Clementine after all. He tries to squirrel away some of his memories in hidden corners of his mind, but the process is implacable.\n\nIf you think this makes the movie sound penetrable, you have no idea. As the movie opens, Joel is seized with an inexplicable compulsion to ditch work and take the train to Montauk, and on the train he meets Clementine. For all they know they have never seen each other before, but somehow there’s a connection, a distant shadow of deja vu. During the course of the film, which moves freely, dizzyingly, forward and backward in time, they will each experience fragmentary versions of relationships they had, might have had, or might be having.\n\nMeanwhile, back at the Lacuna head office, there are more complications.\n\nLacuna (**www.lacunainc.com**) seems to be a prosperous and growing firm (it advertises a Valentine’s Day Special), but in reality, it consists only of the avuncular Dr. Mierzwiak and his team of assistants: Stan ([Mark Ruffalo](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/mark-ruffalo)), Patrick ([Elijah Wood](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/elijah-wood)) and Mary ([Kirsten Dunst](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/kirsten-dunst)). There are innumerable complications involving them, which I will not describe because it would not only be unfair to reveal the plot but probably impossible.\n\n“Eternal Sunshine” has been directed by [Michel Gondry](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/michel-gondry), a music video veteran whose first feature, “[Human Nature](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/human-nature-2002)” (2002), also written by Kaufman, had a lunacy that approached genius and then veered away. In that film, [Tim Robbins](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/tim-robbins) starred as an overtrained child who devotes his adult life to teaching table manners to white mice. The scene where the male mouse politely pulls out the chair for the female to sit down is without doubt in a category of its own.\n\nDespite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, “Eternal Sunshine” has an emotional center, and that’s what makes it work. Although Joel and Clementine ping-pong through various stages of romance and reality, what remains constant is the human need for love and companionship, and the human compulsion to keep seeking it, despite all odds. It may also be true that Joel and Clementine, who seem to be such opposites (he is shy and compulsive, she is extroverted and even wild), might be a good match for each other, and so if they keep on meeting they will keep on falling in love, and Lacuna Inc. may have to be replaced with the Witness Protection Program.\n\nFor Jim Carrey, this is another successful attempt, like “[The Truman Show](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/the-truman-show-1998)” and the underrated “[The Majestic](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/the-majestic-2001),” to extend himself beyond screwball comedy. He has an everyman appeal, and here he dials down his natural energy to give us a man who is so lonely and needy that a fragment of memory is better than none at all. Kate Winslet is the right foil for him, exasperated by Joel’s peculiarities while paradoxically fond of them. The shenanigans back at Lacuna belong on a different level of reality, but even there, secrets are revealed that are oddly touching.\n\nKaufman’s mission seems to be the penetration of the human mind. His characters journeyed into the skull of [John Malkovich](https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/cast-and-crew\/john-malkovich), and there is a good possibility that two of them were inhabiting the same body in “Adaptation.” But both of those movies were about characters trying to achieve something outside themselves. The insight of “Eternal Sunshine” is that, at the end of the day, our memories are all we really have, and when they’re gone, we’re gone.","meta_canonical":null}

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Boilerpipe Text	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. — Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard” It’s one thing to wash that man right outta your hair, and another to erase him from your mind. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” imagines a scientific procedure that can obliterate whole fields of memory — so that, for example, Clementine can forget that she ever met Joel, let alone fell in love with him. “Is there any danger of brain damage?” the inventor of the process is asked. “Well,” he allows, in his most kindly voice, “technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.” The movie is a labyrinth created by the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman , whose “ Being John Malkovich ” and “ Adaptation ” were neorealism compared to this. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play Joel and Clementine, in a movie that sometimes feels like an endless series of aborted Meet Cutes. That they lose their minds while all about them are keeping theirs is a tribute to their skill; they center their characters so that we can actually care about them even when they’re constantly losing track of their own lives. (“My journal,” Joel observes oddly, “is … just blank.”) The movie is a radical example of Maze Cinema, that style in which the story coils back upon itself, redefining everything and then throwing it up in the air and redefining it again. To reconstruct it in chronological order would be cheating, but I will cheat: At some point before the technical beginning of the movie, Joel and Clementine were in love, and their affair ended badly, and Clementine went to Dr. Howard Mierzwiak ( Tom Wilkinson ) at Lacuna Inc., to have Joel erased from her mind. Discovering this, Joel in revenge applies to have his memories of her erased. But the funny thing about love is, it can survive the circumstances of its ending; we remember good times better than bad ones, and Joel decides in mid-process that maybe he would like to remember Clementine after all. He tries to squirrel away some of his memories in hidden corners of his mind, but the process is implacable. If you think this makes the movie sound penetrable, you have no idea. As the movie opens, Joel is seized with an inexplicable compulsion to ditch work and take the train to Montauk, and on the train he meets Clementine. For all they know they have never seen each other before, but somehow there’s a connection, a distant shadow of deja vu. During the course of the film, which moves freely, dizzyingly, forward and backward in time, they will each experience fragmentary versions of relationships they had, might have had, or might be having. Meanwhile, back at the Lacuna head office, there are more complications. Lacuna ( www.lacunainc.com ) seems to be a prosperous and growing firm (it advertises a Valentine’s Day Special), but in reality, it consists only of the avuncular Dr. Mierzwiak and his team of assistants: Stan ( Mark Ruffalo ), Patrick ( Elijah Wood ) and Mary ( Kirsten Dunst ). There are innumerable complications involving them, which I will not describe because it would not only be unfair to reveal the plot but probably impossible. “Eternal Sunshine” has been directed by Michel Gondry , a music video veteran whose first feature, “ Human Nature ” (2002), also written by Kaufman, had a lunacy that approached genius and then veered away. In that film, Tim Robbins starred as an overtrained child who devotes his adult life to teaching table manners to white mice. The scene where the male mouse politely pulls out the chair for the female to sit down is without doubt in a category of its own. Despite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, “Eternal Sunshine” has an emotional center, and that’s what makes it work. Although Joel and Clementine ping-pong through various stages of romance and reality, what remains constant is the human need for love and companionship, and the human compulsion to keep seeking it, despite all odds. It may also be true that Joel and Clementine, who seem to be such opposites (he is shy and compulsive, she is extroverted and even wild), might be a good match for each other, and so if they keep on meeting they will keep on falling in love, and Lacuna Inc. may have to be replaced with the Witness Protection Program. For Jim Carrey, this is another successful attempt, like “ The Truman Show ” and the underrated “ The Majestic ,” to extend himself beyond screwball comedy. He has an everyman appeal, and here he dials down his natural energy to give us a man who is so lonely and needy that a fragment of memory is better than none at all. Kate Winslet is the right foil for him, exasperated by Joel’s peculiarities while paradoxically fond of them. The shenanigans back at Lacuna belong on a different level of reality, but even there, secrets are revealed that are oddly touching. Kaufman’s mission seems to be the penetration of the human mind. His characters journeyed into the skull of John Malkovich , and there is a good possibility that two of them were inhabiting the same body in “Adaptation.” But both of those movies were about characters trying to achieve something outside themselves. The insight of “Eternal Sunshine” is that, at the end of the day, our memories are all we really have, and when they’re gone, we’re gone.
Markdown	[![Roger Ebert Logo](https://www.rogerebert.com/wp-content/themes/roger-ebert/source/images/roger-ebert-logo.svg)](https://www.rogerebert.com/) [![Search Icon](https://www.rogerebert.com/wp-content/themes/roger-ebert/source/images/search-thin.svg)](https://www.rogerebert.com/search) [Signup](https://www.rogerebert.com/prime) - [Movie Reviews](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews) - [Great Movies](https://www.rogerebert.com/great-movies) - [TV/Streaming](https://www.rogerebert.com/streaming) - [Interviews](https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews) - [Collections](https://www.rogerebert.com/collections) - [Festivals & Awards](https://www.rogerebert.com/festivals-and-awards) - [Contributors](https://www.rogerebert.com/contributors) [Reviews](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews) # Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ![star rating](https://www.rogerebert.com/wp-content/themes/roger-ebert/source/images/stars-fill.svg) ![star rating](https://www.rogerebert.com/wp-content/themes/roger-ebert/source/images/stars.svg) [Drama](https://www.rogerebert.com/genre/drama) 108 minutes ‧ R ‧ 2004 [Roger Ebert](https://www.rogerebert.com/contributors/roger-ebert) March 19, 2004 5 min read ![](https://www.rogerebert.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Eternal-Sunshine-of-the-Spotless-Mind.jpg) Clementine (Kate Winslet) and Joel (Jim Carrey) are driven by an attraction that continues even when memories of each other are erased in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." 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. — Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard” It’s one thing to wash that man right outta your hair, and another to erase him from your mind. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” imagines a scientific procedure that can obliterate whole fields of memory — so that, for example, Clementine can forget that she ever met Joel, let alone fell in love with him. “Is there any danger of brain damage?” the inventor of the process is asked. “Well,” he allows, in his most kindly voice, “technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.” The movie is a labyrinth created by the screenwriter [Charlie Kaufman](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/charlie-kaufman), whose “[Being John Malkovich](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/being-john-malkovich-1999)” and “[Adaptation](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-adaptation-2002)” were neorealism compared to this. [Jim Carrey](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/jim-carrey) and [Kate Winslet](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/kate-winslet) play Joel and Clementine, in a movie that sometimes feels like an endless series of aborted Meet Cutes. That they lose their minds while all about them are keeping theirs is a tribute to their skill; they center their characters so that we can actually care about them even when they’re constantly losing track of their own lives. (“My journal,” Joel observes oddly, “is … just blank.”) The movie is a radical example of Maze Cinema, that style in which the story coils back upon itself, redefining everything and then throwing it up in the air and redefining it again. To reconstruct it in chronological order would be cheating, but I will cheat: At some point before the technical beginning of the movie, Joel and Clementine were in love, and their affair ended badly, and Clementine went to Dr. Howard Mierzwiak ([Tom Wilkinson](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/tom-wilkinson)) at Lacuna Inc., to have Joel erased from her mind. Discovering this, Joel in revenge applies to have his memories of her erased. But the funny thing about love is, it can survive the circumstances of its ending; we remember good times better than bad ones, and Joel decides in mid-process that maybe he would like to remember Clementine after all. He tries to squirrel away some of his memories in hidden corners of his mind, but the process is implacable. If you think this makes the movie sound penetrable, you have no idea. As the movie opens, Joel is seized with an inexplicable compulsion to ditch work and take the train to Montauk, and on the train he meets Clementine. For all they know they have never seen each other before, but somehow there’s a connection, a distant shadow of deja vu. During the course of the film, which moves freely, dizzyingly, forward and backward in time, they will each experience fragmentary versions of relationships they had, might have had, or might be having. Meanwhile, back at the Lacuna head office, there are more complications. Lacuna (www.lacunainc.com) seems to be a prosperous and growing firm (it advertises a Valentine’s Day Special), but in reality, it consists only of the avuncular Dr. Mierzwiak and his team of assistants: Stan ([Mark Ruffalo](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/mark-ruffalo)), Patrick ([Elijah Wood](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/elijah-wood)) and Mary ([Kirsten Dunst](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/kirsten-dunst)). There are innumerable complications involving them, which I will not describe because it would not only be unfair to reveal the plot but probably impossible. “Eternal Sunshine” has been directed by [Michel Gondry](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/michel-gondry), a music video veteran whose first feature, “[Human Nature](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/human-nature-2002)” (2002), also written by Kaufman, had a lunacy that approached genius and then veered away. In that film, [Tim Robbins](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/tim-robbins) starred as an overtrained child who devotes his adult life to teaching table manners to white mice. The scene where the male mouse politely pulls out the chair for the female to sit down is without doubt in a category of its own. Despite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, “Eternal Sunshine” has an emotional center, and that’s what makes it work. Although Joel and Clementine ping-pong through various stages of romance and reality, what remains constant is the human need for love and companionship, and the human compulsion to keep seeking it, despite all odds. It may also be true that Joel and Clementine, who seem to be such opposites (he is shy and compulsive, she is extroverted and even wild), might be a good match for each other, and so if they keep on meeting they will keep on falling in love, and Lacuna Inc. may have to be replaced with the Witness Protection Program. For Jim Carrey, this is another successful attempt, like “[The Truman Show](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-truman-show-1998)” and the underrated “[The Majestic](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-majestic-2001),” to extend himself beyond screwball comedy. He has an everyman appeal, and here he dials down his natural energy to give us a man who is so lonely and needy that a fragment of memory is better than none at all. Kate Winslet is the right foil for him, exasperated by Joel’s peculiarities while paradoxically fond of them. The shenanigans back at Lacuna belong on a different level of reality, but even there, secrets are revealed that are oddly touching. Kaufman’s mission seems to be the penetration of the human mind. His characters journeyed into the skull of [John Malkovich](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/john-malkovich), and there is a good possibility that two of them were inhabiting the same body in “Adaptation.” But both of those movies were about characters trying to achieve something outside themselves. The insight of “Eternal Sunshine” is that, at the end of the day, our memories are all we really have, and when they’re gone, we’re gone. Now streaming on: [Powered by ![JustWatch](https://widget.justwatch.com/assets/JW_logo_black_10px.svg)](https://www.justwatch.com/) ![](https://www.rogerebert.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Roger-Ebert-1.jpg) ##### [Roger Ebert](https://www.rogerebert.com/contributors/roger-ebert) Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. #### Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [Drama](https://www.rogerebert.com/genre/drama) ![star rating](https://www.rogerebert.com/wp-content/themes/roger-ebert/source/images/stars-fill.svg) ![star rating](https://www.rogerebert.com/wp-content/themes/roger-ebert/source/images/stars.svg) 108 minutes ‧ R ‧ 2004 ![](https://www.rogerebert.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Eternal-Sunshine-of-the-Spotless-Mind.jpg) #### Cast - [Elijah Wood](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/elijah-wood) as Patrick - [Tom Wilkinson](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/tom-wilkinson) as Dr. Howard Mierzwiak - [Kirsten Dunst](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/kirsten-dunst) as Mary - [Jane Adams](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/jane-adams) as Carrie - [Jim Carrey](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/jim-carrey) as Joel Barish - [David Cross](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/david-cross) as Rob - [Kate Winslet](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/kate-winslet) as Clementine Kruczynski - [Thomas Jay Ryan](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/thomas-jay-ryan) as Frank - [Mark Ruffalo](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/mark-ruffalo) as Stan - [Gerry Robert Byrne](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/gerry-robert-byrne) as Train Conductor - #### Written by - [Charlie Kaufman](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/charlie-kaufman) - #### Directed by - [Michel Gondry](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/michel-gondry) #### Leave a comment Please enable JavaScript to view the [comments powered by Disqus.](https://disqus.com/?ref_noscript) * #### Now playing [![Noah Kahan: Out of Body](https://www.rogerebert.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/MV5BNzA0ZWE5MWItYWQyNi00Yjg0LWE0NmUtNTIxODk2ODhhNmM2XkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_-256x320.jpg) Noah Kahan: Out of Body Brian Tallerico ![star 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Readable Markdown	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. — Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard” It’s one thing to wash that man right outta your hair, and another to erase him from your mind. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” imagines a scientific procedure that can obliterate whole fields of memory — so that, for example, Clementine can forget that she ever met Joel, let alone fell in love with him. “Is there any danger of brain damage?” the inventor of the process is asked. “Well,” he allows, in his most kindly voice, “technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.” The movie is a labyrinth created by the screenwriter [Charlie Kaufman](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/charlie-kaufman), whose “[Being John Malkovich](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/being-john-malkovich-1999)” and “[Adaptation](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-adaptation-2002)” were neorealism compared to this. [Jim Carrey](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/jim-carrey) and [Kate Winslet](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/kate-winslet) play Joel and Clementine, in a movie that sometimes feels like an endless series of aborted Meet Cutes. That they lose their minds while all about them are keeping theirs is a tribute to their skill; they center their characters so that we can actually care about them even when they’re constantly losing track of their own lives. (“My journal,” Joel observes oddly, “is … just blank.”) The movie is a radical example of Maze Cinema, that style in which the story coils back upon itself, redefining everything and then throwing it up in the air and redefining it again. To reconstruct it in chronological order would be cheating, but I will cheat: At some point before the technical beginning of the movie, Joel and Clementine were in love, and their affair ended badly, and Clementine went to Dr. Howard Mierzwiak ([Tom Wilkinson](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/tom-wilkinson)) at Lacuna Inc., to have Joel erased from her mind. Discovering this, Joel in revenge applies to have his memories of her erased. But the funny thing about love is, it can survive the circumstances of its ending; we remember good times better than bad ones, and Joel decides in mid-process that maybe he would like to remember Clementine after all. He tries to squirrel away some of his memories in hidden corners of his mind, but the process is implacable. If you think this makes the movie sound penetrable, you have no idea. As the movie opens, Joel is seized with an inexplicable compulsion to ditch work and take the train to Montauk, and on the train he meets Clementine. For all they know they have never seen each other before, but somehow there’s a connection, a distant shadow of deja vu. During the course of the film, which moves freely, dizzyingly, forward and backward in time, they will each experience fragmentary versions of relationships they had, might have had, or might be having. Meanwhile, back at the Lacuna head office, there are more complications. Lacuna (www.lacunainc.com) seems to be a prosperous and growing firm (it advertises a Valentine’s Day Special), but in reality, it consists only of the avuncular Dr. Mierzwiak and his team of assistants: Stan ([Mark Ruffalo](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/mark-ruffalo)), Patrick ([Elijah Wood](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/elijah-wood)) and Mary ([Kirsten Dunst](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/kirsten-dunst)). There are innumerable complications involving them, which I will not describe because it would not only be unfair to reveal the plot but probably impossible. “Eternal Sunshine” has been directed by [Michel Gondry](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/michel-gondry), a music video veteran whose first feature, “[Human Nature](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/human-nature-2002)” (2002), also written by Kaufman, had a lunacy that approached genius and then veered away. In that film, [Tim Robbins](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/tim-robbins) starred as an overtrained child who devotes his adult life to teaching table manners to white mice. The scene where the male mouse politely pulls out the chair for the female to sit down is without doubt in a category of its own. Despite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, “Eternal Sunshine” has an emotional center, and that’s what makes it work. Although Joel and Clementine ping-pong through various stages of romance and reality, what remains constant is the human need for love and companionship, and the human compulsion to keep seeking it, despite all odds. It may also be true that Joel and Clementine, who seem to be such opposites (he is shy and compulsive, she is extroverted and even wild), might be a good match for each other, and so if they keep on meeting they will keep on falling in love, and Lacuna Inc. may have to be replaced with the Witness Protection Program. For Jim Carrey, this is another successful attempt, like “[The Truman Show](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-truman-show-1998)” and the underrated “[The Majestic](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-majestic-2001),” to extend himself beyond screwball comedy. He has an everyman appeal, and here he dials down his natural energy to give us a man who is so lonely and needy that a fragment of memory is better than none at all. Kate Winslet is the right foil for him, exasperated by Joel’s peculiarities while paradoxically fond of them. The shenanigans back at Lacuna belong on a different level of reality, but even there, secrets are revealed that are oddly touching. Kaufman’s mission seems to be the penetration of the human mind. His characters journeyed into the skull of [John Malkovich](https://www.rogerebert.com/cast-and-crew/john-malkovich), and there is a good possibility that two of them were inhabiting the same body in “Adaptation.” But both of those movies were about characters trying to achieve something outside themselves. The insight of “Eternal Sunshine” is that, at the end of the day, our memories are all we really have, and when they’re gone, we’re gone.
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