🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 99 (from laksa115)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa099.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.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/19/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/19/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2024\/mar\/19\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary","crawl_time":1774296599,"first_indexed_time":1710862734,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,theguardian!www,\/film\/2024\/mar\/19\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary s443","src_root_hash":"4161074618625082499","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at 20: a love story that’s impossible to forget | Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind | The Guardian","meta_descriptions":["Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet forget they used to be in love in a wonderfully inventive and moving reminder of why romantic pain is an important thing to remember"],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"T\nhe greatest screen romances are usually about failure, not happily ever afters. Love sacrificed. Love unrequited. Love forbidden by social mores or bad timing or the tectonic forces of history. Think Casablanca. Brief Encounter. In the Mood for Love. The Age of Innocence. Moonlight. Considered another way, though, they’re powerful because they end so pristinely, before the banal hassles and petty fissures of everyday life make a mess of things. Give a relationship enough time and Before Sunrise turns into Before Midnight.\nOne of the reasons why\nEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind\n, now 20 years old, ranks among the best love stories of the 21st century is that it makes the unique argument that failure is an essential, precious part of romantic experience. It’s only human to want that pain to go away, but the film suggests that literally making it so would be a wish on a monkey’s paw, offering some short-term relief, perhaps, but with unanticipated long-term consequences. People usually have many more failed relationships before one that succeeds, after all, and the accumulation of experience and memory not only means something, but that meaning isn’t static. Bitter moments can turn bittersweet.\nBy 2004, when Eternal Sunshine was released, screenwriter\nCharlie Kaufman\nhad already established himself as a great poet of failure with his scripts for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, two comedies about dysfunctional, sweat-caked men who struggle to transcend their limitations. Kaufman was also the rarest of rare talents: a screenwriter whose voice was so unmistakably original that critics credited him over his directors. That may give short shrift to the contributions of Spike Jonze, who directed Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, and Michel Gondry, who had made the less-heralded Human Nature, but Jonze and Gondry seemed inclined to yield to Kaufman’s grungy conceptual wizardry.\nThough Kaufman would eventually go behind the camera himself with audacious future films like Synecdoche, New York and I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Eternal Sunshine is one film where the writer and the director, Gondry again, make equally formidable and complementary contributions. In order to make a complicated point about love and memory, Kaufman’s script takes occasional residence inside one man’s conscience, not unlike he did with Being John Malkovich. But here, Gondry’s experience as an innovator on music video – particularly the in-camera effects in work like\nBjork’s Bachelorette\nor\nKylie Minogue’s Come into My World\n– gives his frantic odyssey a lo-fi visual pop.\nEternal Sunshine begins at the end, creating a structural loop that Kaufman pointedly opts not to close completely. On his way to work on a cold February morning, Joel Barish, played by dramatically toned down Jim Carrey, impulsively decides to take a commuter train to Montauk and winds up hitting it off with a vivacious stranger, Clementine (Kate Winslet), he meets on the platform. What neither of them realize is that not only have they met before, but they had a long-term relationship that ended in a painful breakup. They just don’t remember anything about it, at least nothing beyond a few tremors of deja vu.\nThere’s a not-very-simple explanation for all this. After the breakup, Clementine enlisted the services of a company called Lacuna, which offers clients a procedure to target and erase memories from the brain. When Joel discovers through mutual friends that Clementine had him erased, he does likewise, which triggers a hilariously analog session where technicians (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) strap a colander-like device to his head and use an old computer to zap the affected areas while he’s unconscious. (When Joel asks Lacuna’s chief doctor, played by\nTom Wilkinson\n, whether the procedure risks brain damage, he replies: “Well, technically speaking, the procedure\nis\nbrain damage.”)\nAs the session goes on and he experiences the lost memories as a kind of agitated waking dream, Joel starts to rebel and whisks Clementine away to recesses of his mind where he thinks the technicians won’t find him. This gives Gondry license to create vivid scenes that darken and contort as his memories are scrubbed, like Polaroids developing in reverse. It also allows Carrey to retreat to his childlike comic persona at times while showing a more vulnerable side as an actor, as Joel finds himself clinging to Clementine despite whatever residual animosity he feels over their breakup. He doesn’t like the idea that he won’t remember her.\nEternal Sunshine doesn’t limit the comic friction to Joel and Clementine, either. There’s also a love triangle at Lacuna involving the young secretary (Kirsten Dunst) that creates its own kind of mess, a salty back-and-forth between two of Joel’s friends (David Cross and Jane Adams), and a creepy subplot where a Lacuna technician uses Joel’s file to hook up with Clementine. There’s not a single relationship in the film that seems settled and happy, which could be said of every relationship in a Charlie Kaufman project. And yet, Eternal Sunshine remains a deeply romantic film, because those fleeting moments of connection are magical and Kaufman has a secret appreciation for the mating habits of our flawed species.\nThere are many grace notes that make the film as indelible as the memories that Joel longs to keep: the delicate score by Jon Brion, who also collaborates with Beck on a gorgeous cover of the Korgis’ Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime, the off-season majesty of a frozen lake and a Long Island beach in winter, and Kaufman’s typically pungent dialogue, which zaps away sentiment like a Lacuna desktop. Eternal Sunshine celebrates the essential untidiness of love, the beautiful messes two people can make together. It’s a folly to think we’d want it any other way.\nThis article was amended on 19 March 2024. The company was incorrectly referred to as Lucuna rather than Lacuna","attrs_markdown":"![](https:\/\/sb.scorecardresearch.com\/p?c1=2&c2=6035250&cv=2.0&cj=1&cs_ucfr=0&comscorekw=film)\n\n[Skip to main content](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2024\/mar\/19\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary#maincontent)[Skip to navigation](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2024\/mar\/19\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary#navigation)\n\nClose dialogue\n\n1\/1\n\nNext image\n\nPrevious image\n\nToggle caption\n\n[Skip to navigation](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2024\/mar\/19\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary#navigation)\n\n[Print subscriptions](https:\/\/support.theguardian.com\/subscribe\/weekly?REFPVID=mn3mdwj0ue7bjtquuynv&INTCMP=undefined&acquisitionData=%7B%22source%22%3A%22GUARDIAN_WEB%22%2C%22componentId%22%3A%22PrintSubscriptionsHeaderLink%22%2C%22componentType%22%3A%22ACQUISITIONS_HEADER%22%2C%22referrerPageviewId%22%3A%22mn3mdwj0ue7bjtquuynv%22%2C%22referrerUrl%22%3A%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffilm%2F2024%2Fmar%2F19%2Feternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary%22%7D)\n\n[Search jobs](https:\/\/jobs.theguardian.com\/)\n\n[Sign in](https:\/\/profile.theguardian.com\/signin?INTCMP=DOTCOM_NEWHEADER_SIGNIN&ABCMP=ab-sign-in&componentEventParams=componentType%3Didentityauthentication%26componentId%3Dguardian_signin_header)\n\nEur\n\n- [Europe edition](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/preference\/edition\/eur)\n- [UK edition](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/preference\/edition\/uk)\n- [US edition](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/preference\/edition\/us)\n- [Australia edition](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/preference\/edition\/au)\n- [International edition](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/preference\/edition\/int)\n\n[The Guardian - 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Photograph: Focus Features\/Allstar\n\n[View image in fullscreen](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2024\/mar\/19\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary#img-1)\n\nJim Carrey and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Photograph: Focus Features\/Allstar\n\n[Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind)\n\nThis article is more than **2 years old**\n\n# Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at 20: a love story that’s impossible to forget\nThis article is more than 2 years old\n\nJim Carrey and Kate Winslet forget they used to be in love in a wonderfully inventive and moving reminder of why romantic pain is an important thing to remember\n\n[Scott Tobias](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/profile\/scott-tobias)\n\nTue 19 Mar 2024 09.02 CET\n\nLast modified on Tue 19 Mar 2024 15.02 CET\n\nShare\n\n[293293](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2024\/mar\/19\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary#comments)\n\n[Prefer the Guardian on Google](https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=theguardian.com)\n\nThe greatest screen romances are usually about failure, not happily ever afters. Love sacrificed. Love unrequited. Love forbidden by social mores or bad timing or the tectonic forces of history. Think Casablanca. Brief Encounter. In the Mood for Love. The Age of Innocence. Moonlight. Considered another way, though, they’re powerful because they end so pristinely, before the banal hassles and petty fissures of everyday life make a mess of things. Give a relationship enough time and Before Sunrise turns into Before Midnight.\n\n[![From clockwise: The War of the Roses, Happy Together, 500 Days of Summer and Casablanca](https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/f1329e11bae41806e9ec4e757ac3f49f0dce55f4\/0_0_3000_1800\/master\/3000.jpg?width=460&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=3864a51c040425b6fd061df2793ebba0)Casablanca to Starship Troopers: the movie breakups that hit our writers hardest Read more](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2019\/nov\/06\/casablanca-starship-troopers-movie-breakups)\n\nOne of the reasons why [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind), now 20 years old, ranks among the best love stories of the 21st century is that it makes the unique argument that failure is an essential, precious part of romantic experience. It’s only human to want that pain to go away, but the film suggests that literally making it so would be a wish on a monkey’s paw, offering some short-term relief, perhaps, but with unanticipated long-term consequences. People usually have many more failed relationships before one that succeeds, after all, and the accumulation of experience and memory not only means something, but that meaning isn’t static. Bitter moments can turn bittersweet.\n\nBy 2004, when Eternal Sunshine was released, screenwriter [Charlie Kaufman](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/charlie-kaufman) had already established himself as a great poet of failure with his scripts for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, two comedies about dysfunctional, sweat-caked men who struggle to transcend their limitations. Kaufman was also the rarest of rare talents: a screenwriter whose voice was so unmistakably original that critics credited him over his directors. That may give short shrift to the contributions of Spike Jonze, who directed Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, and Michel Gondry, who had made the less-heralded Human Nature, but Jonze and Gondry seemed inclined to yield to Kaufman’s grungy conceptual wizardry.\n\nThough Kaufman would eventually go behind the camera himself with audacious future films like Synecdoche, New York and I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Eternal Sunshine is one film where the writer and the director, Gondry again, make equally formidable and complementary contributions. In order to make a complicated point about love and memory, Kaufman’s script takes occasional residence inside one man’s conscience, not unlike he did with Being John Malkovich. But here, Gondry’s experience as an innovator on music video – particularly the in-camera effects in work like [Bjork’s Bachelorette](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=U94S_XrhjDI) or [Kylie Minogue’s Come into My World](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=63vqob-MljQ) – gives his frantic odyssey a lo-fi visual pop.\n\nEternal Sunshine begins at the end, creating a structural loop that Kaufman pointedly opts not to close completely. On his way to work on a cold February morning, Joel Barish, played by dramatically toned down Jim Carrey, impulsively decides to take a commuter train to Montauk and winds up hitting it off with a vivacious stranger, Clementine (Kate Winslet), he meets on the platform. What neither of them realize is that not only have they met before, but they had a long-term relationship that ended in a painful breakup. They just don’t remember anything about it, at least nothing beyond a few tremors of deja vu.\n\nThere’s a not-very-simple explanation for all this. After the breakup, Clementine enlisted the services of a company called Lacuna, which offers clients a procedure to target and erase memories from the brain. When Joel discovers through mutual friends that Clementine had him erased, he does likewise, which triggers a hilariously analog session where technicians (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) strap a colander-like device to his head and use an old computer to zap the affected areas while he’s unconscious. (When Joel asks Lacuna’s chief doctor, played by [Tom Wilkinson](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/tom-wilkinson), whether the procedure risks brain damage, he replies: “Well, technically speaking, the procedure *is* brain damage.”)\n\nAs the session goes on and he experiences the lost memories as a kind of agitated waking dream, Joel starts to rebel and whisks Clementine away to recesses of his mind where he thinks the technicians won’t find him. This gives Gondry license to create vivid scenes that darken and contort as his memories are scrubbed, like Polaroids developing in reverse. It also allows Carrey to retreat to his childlike comic persona at times while showing a more vulnerable side as an actor, as Joel finds himself clinging to Clementine despite whatever residual animosity he feels over their breakup. He doesn’t like the idea that he won’t remember her.\n\nEternal Sunshine doesn’t limit the comic friction to Joel and Clementine, either. There’s also a love triangle at Lacuna involving the young secretary (Kirsten Dunst) that creates its own kind of mess, a salty back-and-forth between two of Joel’s friends (David Cross and Jane Adams), and a creepy subplot where a Lacuna technician uses Joel’s file to hook up with Clementine. There’s not a single relationship in the film that seems settled and happy, which could be said of every relationship in a Charlie Kaufman project. And yet, Eternal Sunshine remains a deeply romantic film, because those fleeting moments of connection are magical and Kaufman has a secret appreciation for the mating habits of our flawed species.\n\nThere are many grace notes that make the film as indelible as the memories that Joel longs to keep: the delicate score by Jon Brion, who also collaborates with Beck on a gorgeous cover of the Korgis’ Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime, the off-season majesty of a frozen lake and a Long Island beach in winter, and Kaufman’s typically pungent dialogue, which zaps away sentiment like a Lacuna desktop. Eternal Sunshine celebrates the essential untidiness of love, the beautiful messes two people can make together. It’s a folly to think we’d want it any other way.\n\n- This article was amended on 19 March 2024. The company was incorrectly referred to as Lucuna rather than Lacuna\n\nExplore more on these topics\n\n- [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind)\n- [Jim Carrey](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/jimcarrey)\n- [Kate Winslet](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/katewinslet)\n- [Charlie Kaufman](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/charlie-kaufman)\n- [Romance films](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/romance)\n- [Mark Ruffalo](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/mark-ruffalo)\n- [Kirsten Dunst](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/kirsten-dunst)\n- [features](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/tone\/features)\n\nShare\n\n[Reuse this content](https:\/\/syndication.theguardian.com\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffilm%2F2024%2Fmar%2F19%2Feternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary&type=article&internalpagecode=film\/2024\/mar\/19\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary \"Reuse this content\")\n\n### Most viewed\n- [![](https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/9422412f1508e4062fb95e1a57f5e519e751f6b7\/335_0_3331_2666\/master\/3331.jpg?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none) US supreme court appears poised to limit mail-in ballots ahead of midterms](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/mar\/23\/supreme-court-mail-in-ballots-case)\n- [![](https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/bcb11fa33df1edb2ad246a5364fcfbc62276385f\/500_0_5000_4000\/master\/5000.jpg?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none) Reacher star Alan Ritchson filmed allegedly assaulting neighbor](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2026\/mar\/23\/actor-alan-ritchson-alleged-neighbor-assault-video)\n- [![](https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/ee60a42008ff78241b39c29cad72792d7f361835\/0_0_5000_4000\/master\/5000.jpg?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none) Pete Songi on Donald Trump’s changing stances towards Iran – cartoon](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/picture\/2026\/mar\/23\/pete-songi-donald-trump-iran-cartoon)\n- [![](https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/18e354cdd9eca009a2794221d7bb809eca316259\/418_0_4178_3342\/master\/4178.jpg?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none) Scores feared dead as Colombian military plane crashes](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/mar\/23\/colombia-military-plane-crash)\n- [![](https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/646da485954475915b1e91e9a3b9bb1f2fc3f813\/0_0_4020_3216\/master\/4020.jpg?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none) LiveMiddle East crisis live: Trump says Iran and US ‘want to make a deal’ but Tehran says claims of talks are ‘fake news’](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/live\/2026\/mar\/23\/middle-east-crisis-live-iea-chief-says-iran-war-energy-crunch-worse-than-1970s-oil-crises-and-ukraine-war-combined)\n\n## Related stories\n## Related stories\n- ![](https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/a700e8cd86aade9f72ea9555d1ec633ea1206fb2\/526_6_2765_2211\/master\/2765.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none&crop=5%3A4)\n  \n  ### Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was never a love story. 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The awkward, anxious, quiet soul struggling to find a sense of meaning in the world. It felt like it could've been, and still could, written just for me.\n\nI think this is a wonderfully inventive, bold and beautiful film led by two outstanding performances from Winslet and Carrey.\n\n[Jump to comment](https:\/\/discussion.theguardian.com\/comment-permalink\/166940278)\n\n![](https:\/\/avatar.guim.co.uk\/user\/3675084)\n\n[christof62](https:\/\/profile.theguardian.com\/user\/id\/3675084)\n\n[19 Mar 2024 8.32](https:\/\/discussion.theguardian.com\/comment-permalink\/166940278)\n\n65\n\n### Guardian Pick\nOne of the beloved memories of my youth is watching this in an empty cinema several times. Like the write-up mentions, the film has a quirky storyline and features quirky characters, but its gorgeously shot and scored and the emotions it evokes are very universal.\n\n\"like polaroids developing in reverse\" - a gorgeous and apt description.\n\nWherever one stands on Jim Carrey, he should have won awards for his performance in this.\n\n[Jump to comment](https:\/\/discussion.theguardian.com\/comment-permalink\/166940319)\n\n![](https:\/\/avatar.guim.co.uk\/user\/2487587)\n\n[saintabroad](https:\/\/profile.theguardian.com\/user\/id\/2487587)\n\n[19 Mar 2024 8.38](https:\/\/discussion.theguardian.com\/comment-permalink\/166940319)\n\n70\n\n### Guardian Pick\nI don't think a character had resonated as much to me as Joel Barish did the first time I watched this. The awkward, anxious, quiet soul struggling to find a sense of meaning in the world. It felt like it could've been, and still could, written just for me.\n\nI think this is a wonderfully inventive, bold and beautiful film led by two outstanding performances from Winslet and Carrey.\n\n[Jump to comment](https:\/\/discussion.theguardian.com\/comment-permalink\/166940278)\n\n![](https:\/\/avatar.guim.co.uk\/user\/3675084)\n\n[christof62](https:\/\/profile.theguardian.com\/user\/id\/3675084)\n\n[19 Mar 2024 8.32](https:\/\/discussion.theguardian.com\/comment-permalink\/166940278)\n\n65\n\n### Guardian Pick\nOne of the beloved memories of my youth is watching this in an empty cinema several times. Like the write-up mentions, the film has a quirky storyline and features quirky characters, but its gorgeously shot and scored and the emotions it evokes are very universal.\n\n\"like polaroids developing in reverse\" - a gorgeous and apt description.\n\nWherever one stands on Jim Carrey, he should have won awards for his performance in this.\n\n[Jump to comment](https:\/\/discussion.theguardian.com\/comment-permalink\/166940319)\n\n![](https:\/\/avatar.guim.co.uk\/user\/2487587)\n\n[saintabroad](https:\/\/profile.theguardian.com\/user\/id\/2487587)\n\n[19 Mar 2024 8.38](https:\/\/discussion.theguardian.com\/comment-permalink\/166940319)\n\n70\n\nView more comments\n\n## Most viewed\n## Most viewed\n- [Most viewed Across the Guardian](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2024\/mar\/19\/tabs-popular-0)\n- [Most viewed in Film](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2024\/mar\/19\/tabs-popular-1)\n\n### Most viewed Across the\\&nbsp;Guardian\n1. 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All rights reserved.\n\n(dcr)","attrs_readable_markdown":"The greatest screen romances are usually about failure, not happily ever afters. Love sacrificed. Love unrequited. Love forbidden by social mores or bad timing or the tectonic forces of history. Think Casablanca. Brief Encounter. In the Mood for Love. The Age of Innocence. Moonlight. Considered another way, though, they’re powerful because they end so pristinely, before the banal hassles and petty fissures of everyday life make a mess of things. Give a relationship enough time and Before Sunrise turns into Before Midnight.\n\nOne of the reasons why [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind), now 20 years old, ranks among the best love stories of the 21st century is that it makes the unique argument that failure is an essential, precious part of romantic experience. It’s only human to want that pain to go away, but the film suggests that literally making it so would be a wish on a monkey’s paw, offering some short-term relief, perhaps, but with unanticipated long-term consequences. People usually have many more failed relationships before one that succeeds, after all, and the accumulation of experience and memory not only means something, but that meaning isn’t static. Bitter moments can turn bittersweet.\n\nBy 2004, when Eternal Sunshine was released, screenwriter [Charlie Kaufman](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/charlie-kaufman) had already established himself as a great poet of failure with his scripts for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, two comedies about dysfunctional, sweat-caked men who struggle to transcend their limitations. Kaufman was also the rarest of rare talents: a screenwriter whose voice was so unmistakably original that critics credited him over his directors. That may give short shrift to the contributions of Spike Jonze, who directed Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, and Michel Gondry, who had made the less-heralded Human Nature, but Jonze and Gondry seemed inclined to yield to Kaufman’s grungy conceptual wizardry.\n\nThough Kaufman would eventually go behind the camera himself with audacious future films like Synecdoche, New York and I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Eternal Sunshine is one film where the writer and the director, Gondry again, make equally formidable and complementary contributions. In order to make a complicated point about love and memory, Kaufman’s script takes occasional residence inside one man’s conscience, not unlike he did with Being John Malkovich. But here, Gondry’s experience as an innovator on music video – particularly the in-camera effects in work like [Bjork’s Bachelorette](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=U94S_XrhjDI) or [Kylie Minogue’s Come into My World](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=63vqob-MljQ) – gives his frantic odyssey a lo-fi visual pop.\n\nEternal Sunshine begins at the end, creating a structural loop that Kaufman pointedly opts not to close completely. On his way to work on a cold February morning, Joel Barish, played by dramatically toned down Jim Carrey, impulsively decides to take a commuter train to Montauk and winds up hitting it off with a vivacious stranger, Clementine (Kate Winslet), he meets on the platform. What neither of them realize is that not only have they met before, but they had a long-term relationship that ended in a painful breakup. They just don’t remember anything about it, at least nothing beyond a few tremors of deja vu.\n\nThere’s a not-very-simple explanation for all this. After the breakup, Clementine enlisted the services of a company called Lacuna, which offers clients a procedure to target and erase memories from the brain. When Joel discovers through mutual friends that Clementine had him erased, he does likewise, which triggers a hilariously analog session where technicians (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) strap a colander-like device to his head and use an old computer to zap the affected areas while he’s unconscious. (When Joel asks Lacuna’s chief doctor, played by [Tom Wilkinson](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/tom-wilkinson), whether the procedure risks brain damage, he replies: “Well, technically speaking, the procedure *is* brain damage.”)\n\nAs the session goes on and he experiences the lost memories as a kind of agitated waking dream, Joel starts to rebel and whisks Clementine away to recesses of his mind where he thinks the technicians won’t find him. This gives Gondry license to create vivid scenes that darken and contort as his memories are scrubbed, like Polaroids developing in reverse. It also allows Carrey to retreat to his childlike comic persona at times while showing a more vulnerable side as an actor, as Joel finds himself clinging to Clementine despite whatever residual animosity he feels over their breakup. He doesn’t like the idea that he won’t remember her.\n\nEternal Sunshine doesn’t limit the comic friction to Joel and Clementine, either. There’s also a love triangle at Lacuna involving the young secretary (Kirsten Dunst) that creates its own kind of mess, a salty back-and-forth between two of Joel’s friends (David Cross and Jane Adams), and a creepy subplot where a Lacuna technician uses Joel’s file to hook up with Clementine. There’s not a single relationship in the film that seems settled and happy, which could be said of every relationship in a Charlie Kaufman project. And yet, Eternal Sunshine remains a deeply romantic film, because those fleeting moments of connection are magical and Kaufman has a secret appreciation for the mating habits of our flawed species.\n\nThere are many grace notes that make the film as indelible as the memories that Joel longs to keep: the delicate score by Jon Brion, who also collaborates with Beck on a gorgeous cover of the Korgis’ Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime, the off-season majesty of a frozen lake and a Long Island beach in winter, and Kaufman’s typically pungent dialogue, which zaps away sentiment like a Lacuna desktop. Eternal Sunshine celebrates the essential untidiness of love, the beautiful messes two people can make together. It’s a folly to think we’d want it any other way.\n\n- This article was amended on 19 March 2024. The company was incorrectly referred to as Lucuna rather than Lacuna","meta_canonical":null}

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URL	https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/19/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary
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Meta Title	Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at 20: a love story that’s impossible to forget \| Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind \| The Guardian
Meta Description	Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet forget they used to be in love in a wonderfully inventive and moving reminder of why romantic pain is an important thing to remember
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Boilerpipe Text	T he greatest screen romances are usually about failure, not happily ever afters. Love sacrificed. Love unrequited. Love forbidden by social mores or bad timing or the tectonic forces of history. Think Casablanca. Brief Encounter. In the Mood for Love. The Age of Innocence. Moonlight. Considered another way, though, they’re powerful because they end so pristinely, before the banal hassles and petty fissures of everyday life make a mess of things. Give a relationship enough time and Before Sunrise turns into Before Midnight. One of the reasons why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , now 20 years old, ranks among the best love stories of the 21st century is that it makes the unique argument that failure is an essential, precious part of romantic experience. It’s only human to want that pain to go away, but the film suggests that literally making it so would be a wish on a monkey’s paw, offering some short-term relief, perhaps, but with unanticipated long-term consequences. People usually have many more failed relationships before one that succeeds, after all, and the accumulation of experience and memory not only means something, but that meaning isn’t static. Bitter moments can turn bittersweet. By 2004, when Eternal Sunshine was released, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman had already established himself as a great poet of failure with his scripts for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, two comedies about dysfunctional, sweat-caked men who struggle to transcend their limitations. Kaufman was also the rarest of rare talents: a screenwriter whose voice was so unmistakably original that critics credited him over his directors. That may give short shrift to the contributions of Spike Jonze, who directed Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, and Michel Gondry, who had made the less-heralded Human Nature, but Jonze and Gondry seemed inclined to yield to Kaufman’s grungy conceptual wizardry. Though Kaufman would eventually go behind the camera himself with audacious future films like Synecdoche, New York and I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Eternal Sunshine is one film where the writer and the director, Gondry again, make equally formidable and complementary contributions. In order to make a complicated point about love and memory, Kaufman’s script takes occasional residence inside one man’s conscience, not unlike he did with Being John Malkovich. But here, Gondry’s experience as an innovator on music video – particularly the in-camera effects in work like Bjork’s Bachelorette or Kylie Minogue’s Come into My World – gives his frantic odyssey a lo-fi visual pop. Eternal Sunshine begins at the end, creating a structural loop that Kaufman pointedly opts not to close completely. On his way to work on a cold February morning, Joel Barish, played by dramatically toned down Jim Carrey, impulsively decides to take a commuter train to Montauk and winds up hitting it off with a vivacious stranger, Clementine (Kate Winslet), he meets on the platform. What neither of them realize is that not only have they met before, but they had a long-term relationship that ended in a painful breakup. They just don’t remember anything about it, at least nothing beyond a few tremors of deja vu. There’s a not-very-simple explanation for all this. After the breakup, Clementine enlisted the services of a company called Lacuna, which offers clients a procedure to target and erase memories from the brain. When Joel discovers through mutual friends that Clementine had him erased, he does likewise, which triggers a hilariously analog session where technicians (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) strap a colander-like device to his head and use an old computer to zap the affected areas while he’s unconscious. (When Joel asks Lacuna’s chief doctor, played by Tom Wilkinson , whether the procedure risks brain damage, he replies: “Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.”) As the session goes on and he experiences the lost memories as a kind of agitated waking dream, Joel starts to rebel and whisks Clementine away to recesses of his mind where he thinks the technicians won’t find him. This gives Gondry license to create vivid scenes that darken and contort as his memories are scrubbed, like Polaroids developing in reverse. It also allows Carrey to retreat to his childlike comic persona at times while showing a more vulnerable side as an actor, as Joel finds himself clinging to Clementine despite whatever residual animosity he feels over their breakup. He doesn’t like the idea that he won’t remember her. Eternal Sunshine doesn’t limit the comic friction to Joel and Clementine, either. There’s also a love triangle at Lacuna involving the young secretary (Kirsten Dunst) that creates its own kind of mess, a salty back-and-forth between two of Joel’s friends (David Cross and Jane Adams), and a creepy subplot where a Lacuna technician uses Joel’s file to hook up with Clementine. There’s not a single relationship in the film that seems settled and happy, which could be said of every relationship in a Charlie Kaufman project. And yet, Eternal Sunshine remains a deeply romantic film, because those fleeting moments of connection are magical and Kaufman has a secret appreciation for the mating habits of our flawed species. There are many grace notes that make the film as indelible as the memories that Joel longs to keep: the delicate score by Jon Brion, who also collaborates with Beck on a gorgeous cover of the Korgis’ Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime, the off-season majesty of a frozen lake and a Long Island beach in winter, and Kaufman’s typically pungent dialogue, which zaps away sentiment like a Lacuna desktop. Eternal Sunshine celebrates the essential untidiness of love, the beautiful messes two people can make together. It’s a folly to think we’d want it any other way. This article was amended on 19 March 2024. The company was incorrectly referred to as Lucuna rather than Lacuna
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[Tips](https://www.theguardian.com/tips) - - [Search jobs](https://jobs.theguardian.com/) - [Holidays](https://holidays.theguardian.com/?INTCMP=holidays_int_web_newheader) - [Digital Archive](https://theguardian.newspapers.com/) - [Guardian Licensing](https://licensing.theguardian.com/) - [Live events](https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-live-events?INTCMP=live_eur_header_dropdown) - [About Us](https://www.theguardian.com/about) - [Books](https://www.theguardian.com/books) - [Music](https://www.theguardian.com/music) - [TV & radio](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio) - [Art & design](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign) - [Film](https://www.theguardian.com/film) - [Games](https://www.theguardian.com/games) - [Classical](https://www.theguardian.com/music/classicalmusicandopera) - [Stage](https://www.theguardian.com/stage) ![Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2654b8a244b130034600066233aac421ba7ed1d3/0_24_3150_1891/master/3150.jpg?width=465&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none) Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Photograph: Focus Features/Allstar [View image in fullscreen](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/19/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary#img-1) Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Photograph: Focus Features/Allstar [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind](https://www.theguardian.com/film/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind) This article is more than 2 years old # Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at 20: a love story that’s impossible to forget This article is more than 2 years old Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet forget they used to be in love in a wonderfully inventive and moving reminder of why romantic pain is an important thing to remember [Scott Tobias](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/scott-tobias) Tue 19 Mar 2024 09.02 CET Last modified on Tue 19 Mar 2024 15.02 CET Share [293293](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/19/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary#comments) [Prefer the Guardian on Google](https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=theguardian.com) The greatest screen romances are usually about failure, not happily ever afters. Love sacrificed. Love unrequited. Love forbidden by social mores or bad timing or the tectonic forces of history. Think Casablanca. Brief Encounter. In the Mood for Love. The Age of Innocence. Moonlight. Considered another way, though, they’re powerful because they end so pristinely, before the banal hassles and petty fissures of everyday life make a mess of things. Give a relationship enough time and Before Sunrise turns into Before Midnight. [![From clockwise: The War of the Roses, Happy Together, 500 Days of Summer and Casablanca](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f1329e11bae41806e9ec4e757ac3f49f0dce55f4/0_0_3000_1800/master/3000.jpg?width=460&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=3864a51c040425b6fd061df2793ebba0)Casablanca to Starship Troopers: the movie breakups that hit our writers hardest Read more](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/06/casablanca-starship-troopers-movie-breakups) One of the reasons why [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind](https://www.theguardian.com/film/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind), now 20 years old, ranks among the best love stories of the 21st century is that it makes the unique argument that failure is an essential, precious part of romantic experience. It’s only human to want that pain to go away, but the film suggests that literally making it so would be a wish on a monkey’s paw, offering some short-term relief, perhaps, but with unanticipated long-term consequences. People usually have many more failed relationships before one that succeeds, after all, and the accumulation of experience and memory not only means something, but that meaning isn’t static. Bitter moments can turn bittersweet. By 2004, when Eternal Sunshine was released, screenwriter [Charlie Kaufman](https://www.theguardian.com/film/charlie-kaufman) had already established himself as a great poet of failure with his scripts for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, two comedies about dysfunctional, sweat-caked men who struggle to transcend their limitations. Kaufman was also the rarest of rare talents: a screenwriter whose voice was so unmistakably original that critics credited him over his directors. That may give short shrift to the contributions of Spike Jonze, who directed Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, and Michel Gondry, who had made the less-heralded Human Nature, but Jonze and Gondry seemed inclined to yield to Kaufman’s grungy conceptual wizardry. Though Kaufman would eventually go behind the camera himself with audacious future films like Synecdoche, New York and I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Eternal Sunshine is one film where the writer and the director, Gondry again, make equally formidable and complementary contributions. In order to make a complicated point about love and memory, Kaufman’s script takes occasional residence inside one man’s conscience, not unlike he did with Being John Malkovich. But here, Gondry’s experience as an innovator on music video – particularly the in-camera effects in work like [Bjork’s Bachelorette](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U94S_XrhjDI) or [Kylie Minogue’s Come into My World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63vqob-MljQ) – gives his frantic odyssey a lo-fi visual pop. Eternal Sunshine begins at the end, creating a structural loop that Kaufman pointedly opts not to close completely. On his way to work on a cold February morning, Joel Barish, played by dramatically toned down Jim Carrey, impulsively decides to take a commuter train to Montauk and winds up hitting it off with a vivacious stranger, Clementine (Kate Winslet), he meets on the platform. What neither of them realize is that not only have they met before, but they had a long-term relationship that ended in a painful breakup. They just don’t remember anything about it, at least nothing beyond a few tremors of deja vu. There’s a not-very-simple explanation for all this. After the breakup, Clementine enlisted the services of a company called Lacuna, which offers clients a procedure to target and erase memories from the brain. When Joel discovers through mutual friends that Clementine had him erased, he does likewise, which triggers a hilariously analog session where technicians (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) strap a colander-like device to his head and use an old computer to zap the affected areas while he’s unconscious. (When Joel asks Lacuna’s chief doctor, played by [Tom Wilkinson](https://www.theguardian.com/film/tom-wilkinson), whether the procedure risks brain damage, he replies: “Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.”) As the session goes on and he experiences the lost memories as a kind of agitated waking dream, Joel starts to rebel and whisks Clementine away to recesses of his mind where he thinks the technicians won’t find him. This gives Gondry license to create vivid scenes that darken and contort as his memories are scrubbed, like Polaroids developing in reverse. It also allows Carrey to retreat to his childlike comic persona at times while showing a more vulnerable side as an actor, as Joel finds himself clinging to Clementine despite whatever residual animosity he feels over their breakup. He doesn’t like the idea that he won’t remember her. Eternal Sunshine doesn’t limit the comic friction to Joel and Clementine, either. There’s also a love triangle at Lacuna involving the young secretary (Kirsten Dunst) that creates its own kind of mess, a salty back-and-forth between two of Joel’s friends (David Cross and Jane Adams), and a creepy subplot where a Lacuna technician uses Joel’s file to hook up with Clementine. There’s not a single relationship in the film that seems settled and happy, which could be said of every relationship in a Charlie Kaufman project. And yet, Eternal Sunshine remains a deeply romantic film, because those fleeting moments of connection are magical and Kaufman has a secret appreciation for the mating habits of our flawed species. There are many grace notes that make the film as indelible as the memories that Joel longs to keep: the delicate score by Jon Brion, who also collaborates with Beck on a gorgeous cover of the Korgis’ Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime, the off-season majesty of a frozen lake and a Long Island beach in winter, and Kaufman’s typically pungent dialogue, which zaps away sentiment like a Lacuna desktop. Eternal Sunshine celebrates the essential untidiness of love, the beautiful messes two people can make together. It’s a folly to think we’d want it any other way. - This article was amended on 19 March 2024. The company was incorrectly referred to as Lucuna rather than Lacuna Explore more on these topics - [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind](https://www.theguardian.com/film/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind) - [Jim Carrey](https://www.theguardian.com/film/jimcarrey) - [Kate Winslet](https://www.theguardian.com/film/katewinslet) - [Charlie Kaufman](https://www.theguardian.com/film/charlie-kaufman) - [Romance films](https://www.theguardian.com/film/romance) - [Mark Ruffalo](https://www.theguardian.com/film/mark-ruffalo) - [Kirsten Dunst](https://www.theguardian.com/film/kirsten-dunst) - [features](https://www.theguardian.com/tone/features) Share [Reuse this content](https://syndication.theguardian.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Ffilm%2F2024%2Fmar%2F19%2Feternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary&type=article&internalpagecode=film/2024/mar/19/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-anniversary "Reuse this content") ### Most viewed - [![](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9422412f1508e4062fb95e1a57f5e519e751f6b7/335_0_3331_2666/master/3331.jpg?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none) US supreme court appears poised to limit mail-in ballots ahead of midterms](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/23/supreme-court-mail-in-ballots-case) - [![](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bcb11fa33df1edb2ad246a5364fcfbc62276385f/500_0_5000_4000/master/5000.jpg?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none) Reacher star Alan Ritchson filmed allegedly assaulting neighbor](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/mar/23/actor-alan-ritchson-alleged-neighbor-assault-video) - [![](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ee60a42008ff78241b39c29cad72792d7f361835/0_0_5000_4000/master/5000.jpg?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none) Pete Songi on Donald Trump’s changing stances towards Iran – cartoon](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2026/mar/23/pete-songi-donald-trump-iran-cartoon) - [![](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/18e354cdd9eca009a2794221d7bb809eca316259/418_0_4178_3342/master/4178.jpg?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none) Scores feared dead as Colombian military plane crashes](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/23/colombia-military-plane-crash) - [![](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/646da485954475915b1e91e9a3b9bb1f2fc3f813/0_0_4020_3216/master/4020.jpg?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none) LiveMiddle East crisis live: Trump says Iran and US ‘want to make a deal’ but Tehran says claims of talks are ‘fake news’](https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/23/middle-east-crisis-live-iea-chief-says-iran-war-energy-crunch-worse-than-1970s-oil-crises-and-ukraine-war-combined) ## Related stories ## Related stories - ![](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a700e8cd86aade9f72ea9555d1ec633ea1206fb2/526_6_2765_2211/master/2765.jpg?width=220&dpr=1&s=none&crop=5%3A4) ### Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was never a love story. 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The awkward, anxious, quiet soul struggling to find a sense of meaning in the world. It felt like it could've been, and still could, written just for me. I think this is a wonderfully inventive, bold and beautiful film led by two outstanding performances from Winslet and Carrey. [Jump to comment](https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/166940278) ![](https://avatar.guim.co.uk/user/3675084) [christof62](https://profile.theguardian.com/user/id/3675084) [19 Mar 2024 8.32](https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/166940278) 65 ### Guardian Pick One of the beloved memories of my youth is watching this in an empty cinema several times. Like the write-up mentions, the film has a quirky storyline and features quirky characters, but its gorgeously shot and scored and the emotions it evokes are very universal. "like polaroids developing in reverse" - a gorgeous and apt description. Wherever one stands on Jim Carrey, he should have won awards for his performance in this. [Jump to comment](https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/166940319) ![](https://avatar.guim.co.uk/user/2487587) [saintabroad](https://profile.theguardian.com/user/id/2487587) [19 Mar 2024 8.38](https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/166940319) 70 ### Guardian Pick I don't think a character had resonated as much to me as Joel Barish did the first time I watched this. The awkward, anxious, quiet soul struggling to find a sense of meaning in the world. It felt like it could've been, and still could, written just for me. I think this is a wonderfully inventive, bold and beautiful film led by two outstanding performances from Winslet and Carrey. [Jump to comment](https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/166940278) ![](https://avatar.guim.co.uk/user/3675084) [christof62](https://profile.theguardian.com/user/id/3675084) [19 Mar 2024 8.32](https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/166940278) 65 ### Guardian Pick One of the beloved memories of my youth is watching this in an empty cinema several times. Like the write-up mentions, the film has a quirky storyline and features quirky characters, but its gorgeously shot and scored and the emotions it evokes are very universal. "like polaroids developing in reverse" - a gorgeous and apt description. Wherever one stands on Jim Carrey, he should have won awards for his performance in this. [Jump to comment](https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/166940319) ![](https://avatar.guim.co.uk/user/2487587) [saintabroad](https://profile.theguardian.com/user/id/2487587) [19 Mar 2024 8.38](https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/166940319) 70 View more comments ## Most viewed ## Most viewed - [Most viewed Across the Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/19/tabs-popular-0) - [Most viewed in Film](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/19/tabs-popular-1) ### Most viewed Across the\ Guardian 1. [LiveMiddle East crisis live: Trump says Iran and US ‘want to make a deal’ but Tehran says claims of talks are ‘fake news’](https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/23/middle-east-crisis-live-iea-chief-says-iran-war-energy-crunch-worse-than-1970s-oil-crises-and-ukraine-war-combined) 2. 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Readable Markdown	The greatest screen romances are usually about failure, not happily ever afters. Love sacrificed. Love unrequited. Love forbidden by social mores or bad timing or the tectonic forces of history. Think Casablanca. Brief Encounter. In the Mood for Love. The Age of Innocence. Moonlight. Considered another way, though, they’re powerful because they end so pristinely, before the banal hassles and petty fissures of everyday life make a mess of things. Give a relationship enough time and Before Sunrise turns into Before Midnight. One of the reasons why [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind](https://www.theguardian.com/film/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind), now 20 years old, ranks among the best love stories of the 21st century is that it makes the unique argument that failure is an essential, precious part of romantic experience. It’s only human to want that pain to go away, but the film suggests that literally making it so would be a wish on a monkey’s paw, offering some short-term relief, perhaps, but with unanticipated long-term consequences. People usually have many more failed relationships before one that succeeds, after all, and the accumulation of experience and memory not only means something, but that meaning isn’t static. Bitter moments can turn bittersweet. By 2004, when Eternal Sunshine was released, screenwriter [Charlie Kaufman](https://www.theguardian.com/film/charlie-kaufman) had already established himself as a great poet of failure with his scripts for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, two comedies about dysfunctional, sweat-caked men who struggle to transcend their limitations. Kaufman was also the rarest of rare talents: a screenwriter whose voice was so unmistakably original that critics credited him over his directors. That may give short shrift to the contributions of Spike Jonze, who directed Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, and Michel Gondry, who had made the less-heralded Human Nature, but Jonze and Gondry seemed inclined to yield to Kaufman’s grungy conceptual wizardry. Though Kaufman would eventually go behind the camera himself with audacious future films like Synecdoche, New York and I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Eternal Sunshine is one film where the writer and the director, Gondry again, make equally formidable and complementary contributions. In order to make a complicated point about love and memory, Kaufman’s script takes occasional residence inside one man’s conscience, not unlike he did with Being John Malkovich. But here, Gondry’s experience as an innovator on music video – particularly the in-camera effects in work like [Bjork’s Bachelorette](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U94S_XrhjDI) or [Kylie Minogue’s Come into My World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63vqob-MljQ) – gives his frantic odyssey a lo-fi visual pop. Eternal Sunshine begins at the end, creating a structural loop that Kaufman pointedly opts not to close completely. On his way to work on a cold February morning, Joel Barish, played by dramatically toned down Jim Carrey, impulsively decides to take a commuter train to Montauk and winds up hitting it off with a vivacious stranger, Clementine (Kate Winslet), he meets on the platform. What neither of them realize is that not only have they met before, but they had a long-term relationship that ended in a painful breakup. They just don’t remember anything about it, at least nothing beyond a few tremors of deja vu. There’s a not-very-simple explanation for all this. After the breakup, Clementine enlisted the services of a company called Lacuna, which offers clients a procedure to target and erase memories from the brain. When Joel discovers through mutual friends that Clementine had him erased, he does likewise, which triggers a hilariously analog session where technicians (Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) strap a colander-like device to his head and use an old computer to zap the affected areas while he’s unconscious. (When Joel asks Lacuna’s chief doctor, played by [Tom Wilkinson](https://www.theguardian.com/film/tom-wilkinson), whether the procedure risks brain damage, he replies: “Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.”) As the session goes on and he experiences the lost memories as a kind of agitated waking dream, Joel starts to rebel and whisks Clementine away to recesses of his mind where he thinks the technicians won’t find him. This gives Gondry license to create vivid scenes that darken and contort as his memories are scrubbed, like Polaroids developing in reverse. It also allows Carrey to retreat to his childlike comic persona at times while showing a more vulnerable side as an actor, as Joel finds himself clinging to Clementine despite whatever residual animosity he feels over their breakup. He doesn’t like the idea that he won’t remember her. Eternal Sunshine doesn’t limit the comic friction to Joel and Clementine, either. There’s also a love triangle at Lacuna involving the young secretary (Kirsten Dunst) that creates its own kind of mess, a salty back-and-forth between two of Joel’s friends (David Cross and Jane Adams), and a creepy subplot where a Lacuna technician uses Joel’s file to hook up with Clementine. There’s not a single relationship in the film that seems settled and happy, which could be said of every relationship in a Charlie Kaufman project. And yet, Eternal Sunshine remains a deeply romantic film, because those fleeting moments of connection are magical and Kaufman has a secret appreciation for the mating habits of our flawed species. There are many grace notes that make the film as indelible as the memories that Joel longs to keep: the delicate score by Jon Brion, who also collaborates with Beck on a gorgeous cover of the Korgis’ Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime, the off-season majesty of a frozen lake and a Long Island beach in winter, and Kaufman’s typically pungent dialogue, which zaps away sentiment like a Lacuna desktop. Eternal Sunshine celebrates the essential untidiness of love, the beautiful messes two people can make together. It’s a folly to think we’d want it any other way. - This article was amended on 19 March 2024. The company was incorrectly referred to as Lucuna rather than Lacuna
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