Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

A film built on the erasure of a relationship. Joel gets on a train one morning and does not go to work. He meets a woman on a beach; neither of them knows this is not their first meeting. Then the film goes back. Joel learns that Clementine went to a company and had him erased from her memory, and asks for the same procedure. It is done at night, at home. Technicians come, map the brain and delete the memories in order. From there most of the film takes place inside Joel's head. The memories are erased from the most recent to the oldest, and Joel changes his mind while the procedure is running. When he does, an escape begins. He tries to hide Clementine in memories the system is not looking at, in his childhood and in the places he is ashamed of. What the narrative is interested in is not love but the part being erased: the film leaves the worst moments of the relationship until the end, because the memories run backwards and the audience learns the relationship from bad to good. The subplot repeats the same idea. The company's employees know their clients' memories and weaknesses and play with them. Most of the effects were done in the camera rather than by computer. Disappearing people, changing locations and shrinking houses were produced with light, angle and set tricks. The screenplay is by Charlie Kaufman and won an Academy Award; the story was developed by Kaufman, Michel Gondry and Pierre Bismuth. The title comes from a poem by Alexander Pope, and the line is read out in the film. Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood and Tom Wilkinson are in the cast. Michel Gondry directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes films whose structure comes out of their idea. Who it is not for: anyone who wants linear narrative; the first half hour deliberately hides where it is going.