Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) - Oscar® Winner

"Audacious, thought-provoking and ruefully funny.  Lou Lumenick, New York Post
"Fresh, heartfelt and ultimately heartbreaking in its honest portrayal of a modern relationship.  Mariko McDonald, Film Threat
"A delightful little wormhole that takes us on a journey to another dimension of consciousness.  Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle
"Watching Eternal Sunshine, you don't just watch a love story--you fall in love with what love really is.  Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
"Adventuresome, melancholy and exhilarating.  Shawn Levy, Portland Oregonian
"A smart, sexy and seriously funny comedy!  Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

Editor's Note ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is an unconventional romance told in the abstract, inventive, and comedic storytelling style of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Like his scripts for ADAPTATION and BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, this plot works off of a relatively complex idea that is more easily explained through the language of film than through words. In its most basic description, Joel (Jim Carrey) is undergoing a medical procedure to erase the memory of his ex-girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet). However, while he is unconscious and the procedure is underway, he takes a journey through his mind, reliving moments with Clementine for fear of losing her forever. Using disjointed sound and action, foggy periods indicating Joel's confusion, and flashbacks to childhood where objects appear much bigger than they are to adult eyes, the cinematography communicates Joel's dilemma with visual hilarity. Only occasionally is the film laugh-out-loud funny; instead it is much more deeply and darkly amusing as the absurdity of the situation grows. ETERNAL SUNSHINE is nothing short of brilliant--a credit to director Michel Gondry (who has a topnotch reputation for his aesthetic music videos by artists such as Bjork). Carrey is wonderfully understated in the role of a simpleminded nice guy, and his signature goofiness is used only a handful of times. Winslet lights up the screen with her blue hair and orange sweatshirt, playing a lively free spirit and loose cannon. There are also strong supporting performances by Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood, and Mark Ruffalo, along with an excellent score by Jon Brion and a peppy soundtrack including songs by E.L.O. and the Polyphonic Spree. The film's conclusion promises to satisfy viewers; it offers a beautiful metaphor for the end of a love affair that brings perfect closure to this excellent film.

	David Cross
	Elijah Wood
	Jim Carey
	Kate Winslet
	Kirsten Dunst
	Mark Ruffalo
	Thomas Jay Ryan
	Tom Wilkinson
	Jane Adams
	Anthony Bregman - Producer
	Charlie Kaufman - Screenplay
	Ellen Kuras - Cinematographer
	Jon Brion - Original Music By
	Michel Gondry - Director
	Steve Golin - Producer
	Valdis Oskarsdottir - Editor
	Charlie Kaufman, et. al. - Based On Story By
	David Stein - Art Director
	Georges Bermann - Executive Producer
	James Warren - Original Music By

Rolling Stone
"Gondry and the pitch-perfect actors have crafted a remarkable film that can coax a smile about making the same mistakes in love and then sneak up and quietly break your heart." 04/01/2004 p.96

Premiere
"[A] masterpiece....Kate Winslet is truly remarkable....The supporting cast is brilliant..." 04/01/2004 p.22-4

New York Times
"[Gondry] can define contradictory emotions with extraordinary clarity and alacrity. It's why he's so suited to handling much of this particular Kaufman script." 03/19/2004 p.E13

Los Angeles Times
"ETERNAL SUNSHINE is more than anything else deeply sincere." 03/19/2004 p.E1

Entertainment Weekly
"Watching ETERNAL SUNSHINE, you don't just watch a love story - you fall in love with what love really is." 03/26/2004 p.50-1

Chicago Sun-Times
"ETERNAL SUNSHINE has an emotional center, and that's what makes it work." 03/19/2004 p.27

USA Today
"Going to the movies would be an eternally wondrous experience if more movies were as smart, ambitious, offbeat and emotionally rich as ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND." 03/19/2004 p.1E

Box Office
"There's a tenderness and a wistfulness to Kaufman's writing and Carrey's performance..." 05/01/2004 p.31

Uncut
"It's another screenwriting triumph for the prodigiously gifted Charlie Kaufman, directed with visionary panache by Michel Gondry." 11/01/2004 p.157

Ultimate DVD
5 stars out of 5 -- "ETERNAL SUNSHINE is a profound and heart-clenching romantic fantasy....This is a film to own and cherish forever." 08/01/2007 p.85

Wall Street Journal
"A romantic comedy unlike any other, this gorgeous phantasmagoria takes a question that's been posed by poets across the ages -- of what is love compounded? -- and examines it through fanciful scans of a scorned lover's cortex." 12/03/2010

James Berardinelli's ReelViews 9 of 10
A unique romantic comedy, unfettered by the normal expectations of the genre, is a rare and wondrous

Rolling Stone 9 of 10
Don't expect anything standard-issue from this uniquely funny, unpredictably tender and unapologetically twisted romance. Jim Carrey, dropping the goofy faces, has never done anything this deeply felt. The brilliant screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), often accused of an excess of cleverness, plumbs new emotional depths. And visionary director Michel Gondry, whose music-video flash for the likes of Bjork, Radiohead and the White Stripes kept his 2001 collaboration with Kaufman in Human Nature on a showoff level, reveals a bracing maturity in his commitment to character. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind chases so many ideas that it threatens to spin out of control. But with our multiplexes stuffed with toxic Hollywood formula, it's a gift to find a ballsy movie that thinks it can do anything, and damn near does. - Peter Travers

Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
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...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. - Roger Ebert

ReelViews 9 of 10
A unique romantic comedy, unfettered by the normal expectations of the genre, is a rare and wondrous thing. That's precisely what director Michel Gondry, working from a screenplay by Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adapatation), delivers. Without being too offbeat or esoteric, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind nevertheless manages to convey romance without forcing the mind to shift into neutral or dragging the characters through a formulaic structure where chemistry becomes the most important asset...This is unlike any other film I have seen. And, although I value originality in motion pictures, the primary reason I'm recommending Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with so much enthusiasm is because it's a great romance. It's willingness to flout conventions and eschew formulas is just one of many things to celebrate about this charmingly eccentric movie. - James Berardinelli