Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Reviewed By Sarah Downing

After experiencing a difficult break up from his girlfriend Clementine, Joel Barish is heartbroken to discover she has undertaken a special kind of surgery to have all memories of him wiped from her brain.

Unable to live with the knowledge that she no longer has any awareness of him, Joel decides the best option is for him to have the same procedure. This seems like the perfect plan until the process begins.

For the memories to be removed, Joel is forced to mentally relive them. He recollects his relationship with Clementine with defining moments and soon realises that there are some memories he doesn’t want to lose.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an incredibly intelligent creation from the weird and wonderful mind of Charlie Kauffman (Being John Malkovich). It takes an easily identifiable scenario and asks the question, what would the consequences be if we could have any painful memories removed?

Strange is a word that could certainly be associated with this film. The majority of its duration is set inside Joel’s mind and it presents a love story in an unusual way by working backwards from the break up back to the initial connection.

Although slightly odd, this style works perfectly. It captures the essence of the love story to the core but remains quirky enough to keep you laughing as well as crying. All in all, this is definitely one of the must see movies of the year.