Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)

Ten Stars out of Ten Stars (**********/**********)

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

I love this film with every fibre of my being. When I ask myself “why is it you love films so much?”, Eternal Sunshine instantly and always jumps out at me. It is the scene in which Clementine, embracing Joel under the sheets of their bed, dowsed in orange light, begins to talk about an ugly doll she had as a child, which she named Clementine. She goes, “Sometimes I think people don’t understand how lonely it is to be a kid, like you don’t matter.” The intimacy is palpable, and when I first saw this in the cinema, as a 16 year old boy, nostalgia and sadness and happiness all washed over me. It’s the first time I had ever felt my own voice and emotions captured in a film. I’ll remember it forever. From that moment on, and every subsequent time I’ve watched it, the film just carried me away. Every character is just so pitch-perfect and real to me, every line like I’d thought it myself before it was spoken, and every shot familiar and comforting. If this film was a person, I’d be hopelessly, pathetically in love with it.

In every respect it’s a deeply personal film for me, and I’ve no doubt I’ve long since lost the ability to be objective about it, so I won’t really try here. It came at a time where I was just becoming an adult, learning what it felt like to fall in love, to feel emotions, and all those cringeworthy adolescent things. It’s no wonder the film hit me like a tonne of bricks. I view this film as the masterpiece that it is because, above all, it evokes the comfort and dependability of our own memories, thoughts and internal monologue. It challenges me to address my sense of self, whilst at the same time always asking us to celebrate who we are, and be thankful for what we love. Kaufman is a genius, no doubt about that. I can’t stress enough how everyone should watch this film multiple times, it never stops giving. Once is not enough!

And I can’t deny what this film means to me in terms of my eternal Kate Winslet devotion. I guess this is really surplus to the film’s artistic merits, but to me it symbolises my first really hardcore Oscar-watching season, and the culmination of everything I’d wanted for Kate since I fell in love with her back in 97. On top of the fact she gives a towering, tour-de-force performance, the like of which I’d never seen before, other people seemed to agree! Despite an early release-date, internet hype kept her performance fresh, and she scored her fourth Oscar nomination in the Best Actress category. It was the moment for Kate; she started appearing on all-time favourite performances lists, and critics began hailing her as the best actress of her generation. It was heaven for me, and despite the fact that she had no hope of winning, I didn’t care. It was the nomination that was always the goal. Kate had brought it home, she’d done good. I still have my homemade FYC signature that I displayed all season at the Oscarwatch forums, now Awardsdaily. Check it out:

Bless.

Anyway, if you do one thing today, go out and watch, or rewatch, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

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Tags: Academy Award Best Actress, Awards Daily Forums, Best Actress 2004, Charlie Kaufman, Clementine, Elijah Wood, Jim Carrey, Joel, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Meet Me In Montauk, Michel Gondrey, No. 1 Kate Winslet fan, Oscarwatch Forums, Tom Wilkinson