eternal sunshine of the spotless mind movie poster

Like Snyder, director Michel Gondry had a background in music videos. As it celebrates its 15th anniversary this week, let's reclaim the memory (with spoilers) of one of the quintessential films of the 2000s.Įternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind hit theaters the same day as Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead back in 2004. The movie uses the deletion of memories as a plot device, and viewers who fell in love with it in the theater back in March 2004 now have a decade and half of other life experiences vying for recollection space in their heads. Joel may be the protagonist, but the two most interesting characters in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are actually women. It helps that he's surrounded by a stellar supporting cast. Instead of a straight-up comedy, we see Carrey dialing down his usual antics and appearing in a romantic dramedy, one that in this case happens to be blended with quirky sci-fi, too.

Like Punch-Drunk Love in 2002 (also soundtracked by Jon Brion) and Lost in Translation in 2003, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a movie that wrangled career-best work out of a comedic actor, simply by injecting pathos into him via a strong script with an auteurist director behind the camera. Yet there's a whole contingent of moviegoers who, prior to this film and a couple of comparable screen gems in the early 2000s, might have felt it was an awkward question if you asked them, 'What's your favorite romantic comedy?' It's a far cry from the sassy voice that launched him to movie stardom ten years earlier in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

Jim Carrey's voice is laced with melancholy and wry humor as he lets us in on the internal monologue of his character, Joel Barish. Those are the first spoken lines in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Today is a holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap.' 'Random thoughts for Valentine's Day 2004.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind movie poster