eternal sunshine of the spotless mind · bismuth asked director michel gondry what would happen if...

Contents

Acknowledgments 6

Introduction 7

1 Actors and Auteurs 13

2 Science Fiction 31

3 The Comedy of Remarriage 45

4 The Puzzle Film 58

5 Mourning, Melancholy and Trauma 72

Coda 85

Notes 87

Credits 92

Bibliography 98

Copyright material – 9781844578351

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND 7

Introduction

There is a moment in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)when a character Mary Svevo (Kirsten Dunst) quotes the poem thatgives the film its title:

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[.]1

Mary is an employee of Lacuna Inc, a company that specialises inerasing unwanted memories from its clients’ brains, and on severaloccasions she recites a quotation that could give the corporation amotto. She ascribes the poem, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), to PopeAlexander, forgetting for a second that it is in fact by AlexanderPope. But she has forgotten something else, as she makes a pass at herboss, Dr Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson): not only have the two of themalready had an affair, but also her memory of this has been wiped.

The germ of the script for Eternal Sunshine came from the Frenchartist Pierre Bismuth. Bismuth was born in Paris in 1963 of NorthAfrican heritage, and studied visual communication in Paris at ÉcoleNationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, where in part he was taughtby tutors who had been radicals in the student-led rising of May 1968.In 1983, he began to study at the Hochschule der Kunst in Berlin,where he became influenced by the artist Joseph Beuys, known for hisuse of ready-mades and found objects in his work, as well as forperformance art. Bismuth moved back to Paris to set up a studio andhas lived in Brussels since the start of the 1990s, aside from a five-yearspell from 2000 in London when his work was exhibited in the LissonGallery. His art attempts to engage with capitalism and the consumerist


8 BF I F I LM CLASS ICS

images produced by capitalism, for example the ‘Newspaper’ series(1991–2001) that reproduces front pages with a double version of theirmain photograph, ‘Collages for Men’ (2003) in which pornographicmodels are covered by cut-out white paper clothes and ‘Respect for theDead – The Magnificent Seven’ (2003) that projects films such as DirtyHarry (1971), but stops them after the first character’s death.

Bismuth asked director Michel Gondry what would happen ifhe were sent a card telling him that someone ‘“had you erased fromher memory. Please don’t try to reach her.”’2 Gondry discussed thiswith screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and they decided to make a filmabout a relationship that had gone sour. They pitched the idea to astudio, as Being John Malkovich (1999) was in post-production andas Kaufman was commissioned to write what was to becomeAdaptation. (2002). Eternal Sunshine was thus delayed; in themeantime, Gondry directed Kaufman’s script of Human Nature(2001).3 What emerged was a complex and challenging narrative,musing upon the nature of memory and melancholia, part sciencefiction, part romantic comedy, and won Kaufman, Gondry and

Mary has had the memory of her affair with Dr Howard Mierzwiak erased



Bismuth the Academy Award and BAFTA for Best OriginalScreenplay in 2005, as well as Movie of the Year for the AFI and theSaturn Award for Best Science-Fiction Film. Jim Carrey and KateWinslet were also nominated for various acting prizes.

The narrative of the film’s central characters, Joel Barish (JimCarrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), is echoed byMary and Mierzwiak’s failed romance. Mary does not know thecontext for her quotation, Eloisa to Abelard, a heroic verse epistlethat drew on a 1713 translation of letters between Abelard, aphilosopher and theologian who had an affair with his star pupil,Eloisa. When she becomes pregnant, they secretly marry and sheenters a nunnery for safety; Abelard is attacked and castrated. Eloisahas become a bride of Christ while remaining in a loving relationshipwith a mortal man. She is in an impossible situation and will only bereunited with him after both their deaths. Donald B. Clark suggeststhat ‘death, the only solution to her conflict, is revealed by theimagery to be erotic satisfaction.’4 Kaufman had read and liked thelines – ‘I read her letters to Abelard. I find them rather exceptionallymoving’5 – and had used this story for Craig Schwartz’s street puppetshow in Being John Malkovich.

Clementine’s first name offers an allusion to a death in its echoof ‘Oh My Darling, Clementine’, a parody of a folk song about theloss of a lover. In the words of the chorus:

Oh my darling, oh my darling,

Oh my darling, Clementine!

Thou art gone and lost forever

Dreadful sorry, Clementine!

Some of the details of the song suggest that it is ironic – her size nine shoes made from herring boxes, for example, as well as theridiculousness of a splinter causing her to trip over and drown in ariver – but there is a repetition of the fact of her death. The songinspired the title of John Ford’s Western My Darling Clementine



(1946), which uses the music, and Huckleberry Hound’s off-keysinging in the Hanna-Barbera cartoons from 1958 onwards. Joelclaims not to know the character at the start of the movie, althoughhe sings a couple of bars of it in his remembered/imagined childhoodkitchen and then, when he is being bathed in the kitchen sinkalongside her, his mother sings the tune too. ‘I’ve never seen youhappier, Baby Joel’,6 Clementine tells him. In the scene when theyfirst meet – towards the end of the film – Joel sings the song and says‘My favorite thing when I was a kid was my Huckleberry Hounddoll. I think your name is magical.’7 An instrumental version of thetune plays on the soundtrack as Joel listens to the tapes he recordedas part of the erasure process. The name, as Joel points out on theirunwitting reunion at the start of the film, means ‘merciful’ – indeed‘clemency’ – and forgiveness is significant in the context of death andmourning. While Eternal Sunshine is not about lovers parted bydeath, Clementine’s decision to have Joel erased from her life – andhis subsequent decision to erase her from his – leaves them as if they

Joel retreats to happy memories of being bathed in the kitchen sink as a child



are dead to each other. Joel, at least, whose reactions the film focuseson, is left mourning her, in a mood that borders on melancholia.

Joel’s name means ‘YHWH is God’ and is shared with thesecond of the twelve minor Old Testament prophets, but it is also anallusion to the author Joel Townsley Rogers, whose The Red RightHand (1945) is the novel that Clementine was reading at the start offilm, although this is trimmed from the final version. Barish seemslike a Freudian case study, especially in the confessional tapes hemakes of his memories of Clementine. We learn of the experiencesthat led him to the decision to use Lacuna Inc. Because there is a kindof subjective duration of time in the film, much of the narrative isdepicted in reverse order, heading back to Joel’s childhood – or atleast memories of it. This is complicated by the opening scene inwhich Joel and Clementine appear to meet but are being reunited andthe actions of Lacuna Inc that threaten to destroy Joel’s identity. Thefilm thus also fits into the genre of the puzzle film, in which theaudience is forced to work to untangle the narrative. This is not astandard-issue Hollywood narrative.

My discussion of the film is divided into five sections, but thelimits of print are such that a decision had to be made about theorder in which these were placed. It would only be appropriate toread them in a different sequence. After an analysis of the personaethe two main stars bring to Eternal Sunshine, I place the film in theongoing intertwined careers of Kaufman and Gondry. The next threesections discuss genres: science fiction; romantic comedy; and thepuzzle film. The makers of Eternal Sunshine have played with theways in which the film fits and does not fit into a number of genres.The final chapter is more thematic, focusing upon the psychoanalyticaspects of the film, mourning and melancholia, before moving ontomore recent accounts of trauma.

The film draws upon and rejuvenates a number of genres. In an era of effects-heavy blockbusters that seem to be male powerfantasies, it offers a version of science fiction that is grounded inpsychologically complex characters with real human problems,



encouraging reflection from the viewer rather than just astonishmentat the visuals. It also allows the romantic comedy to move into newterritory, although for the last century that subgenre has beentracking the ongoing shifts in the relations between the sexes and hasnot always been as fixated on happy endings as might be assumed. Itmarks stages in Gondry and Kaufman’s careers, as criticallyacclaimed film-makers who do not necessarily make hit films at thebox office. While Time Out New York, Entertainment Weekly andThe Onion all rated it in the top ten best movies of its decade, itgrossed about $70 million worldwide on a budget of $20 million,making it a modest hit. Gondry has continued to make feature films,alongside documentaries, and Kaufman has sought more creativecontrol, both by directing and then by financing his own films.Equally it is significant in the careers of Winslet and Carrey,especially in giving Carrey a chance to grow as an actor beyond thecrowd-pleasing antics of his previous films.

Joel and Clementine’s first meeting is a reunion



1 Actors and Auteurs

A film is clearly a collaboration between a large number of people –the lengthy end credits of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mindgoing some way to demonstrate this. While film criticism hassometimes focused on the director when auteur-inflected – situatingthe film within Michel Gondry’s career – and a more literaryapproach would be to focus on the scriptwriter as the source ofmeaning – say, recurrent themes and style in the work of CharlieKaufman – films are often sold on the strength of their actors.Although some films have posters saying ‘From the producer of –’ or‘From the director of –’, and Kaufman was a sellable commodity onthe back of Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation. (2002), astar actor is a more common way of preselling a film. In casting JimCarrey and Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine benefited from thepublicity that the two stars generated. Each actor brings the baggageof his or her previous roles to a new project, a certain expectation onthe part of the audience. Oddly, Carrey is largely cast against typehere, which risked alienating the audience by failing to give themwhat they expect, and Winslet felt as if she was, but that underplaysthe agency that her earlier characters grasped in settings whereopportunities for women were more limited. Before examining thecareers of Kaufman and Gondry, I want to look at the baggage thatthe earlier work of Carrey and Winslet brought to their roles.

Jim CarreyCanadian Jim Carrey stands in a tradition of film character comedianactors whose performances both sell and transcend specific films. As Philip Drake argues: ‘More than perhaps any other genre, pleasure in comedian comedy relies on our pleasure in watching thestar performance.’8 Mixing verbal comedy with physical presence,



they frequently acknowledge the audience, by breaking the fourthwall or with an extradiegetic look; in The Mask (1994), the maskedStanley Ipkiss (Carrey) looks at and speaks to the audience, declaring‘it’s show time’ and very clearly performing and acknowledging thathe is performing. According to Steve Seidman, the charactercomedian would already be familiar to that audience through workin other media – initially theatre, music hall, vaudeville and radio,but more recently television or stand-up – and thus on some level be aknown quantity.9 The comedian actor is placed within a film in anumber of semantic frames simultaneously:

1 as a fictional character within a given narrative and diegesis;2 as celebrity and star familiar from news stories and interviews;3 as recurring actor who has played other roles in other films (and in

other narratives); and4 as a physical body whose mannerisms we recognise.10

In Eternal Sunshine, Carrey ‘is’ Barish – or indeed a number ofBarishes according to their position in the story, bitter, spotless orsadder and wiser.11 Carrey would be familiar to audiences fromcoverage of red carpets at premieres and award shows and his earlierstar vehicles such as the Ace Ventura films (see below).

Dave Kehr suggests that Carrey is ‘the first major Americancomic to grow up with television in his bloodstream’,12 noting thesignificance of the medium in many of his movies, from the alienbeing educated by TV in Earth Girls Are Easy (1989) to TV as wombin The Truman Show (1998). After struggling in stand-up comedyand gaining a few small roles in films such as The Dead Pool (1988),Carrey became part of the ensemble cast of Keenen Ivory Wayans andDamon Wayans’s sketch show In Living Color (1990–4). His debutleading feature role, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), establishesthe Carrey persona as goofy outsider who never takes those inauthority seriously. He pulls and twists his face, throws his bodyaround (and ventriloquises his bottom) as well as speaking in



The Truman Show (1998) was a more serious role

Carrey had to tone down his normal stylefor Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Liar Liar (1997): Carrey’s smile is part ofhis performance style



exaggerated and nonsensical tones. He is always performing to anaudience, real or imagined. When Lt Lois Einhorn (Sean Young) –eventually exposed as the villain – says, ‘Spare me your routine,Ventura’, it can become easy to empathise. In The Mask, specialeffects transform Carrey into a three-dimensional cartoon characteras he dons a magical mask and causes chaos across a city. The sensethat the masked version of the character is giving free vent to hisdesires is undercut by his hyperactivity when not masked. Althoughin Batman Forever (1995) Carrey had licence to overperform as TheRiddler, he allowed ‘himself to be upstaged by Tommy Lee Jones’smore flamboyant performance’13 as Two-Face.

As with the career of fellow character comedian RobinWilliams, Carrey also took on more serious roles. In The TrumanShow, there is a childlike element to his portrayal of TrumanBurbank, unwitting reality show star at the centre of a stage set. By keeping his mannerisms in check, he enables the audience toempathise and it is this aspect of his persona that helps us care aboutJoel’s plight in Eternal Sunshine. In the Andy Kaufman biopic,Manon the Moon (1999), he transforms himself into the comedian, hisexcessive performance anchored within the earlier charactercomedian’s personae. Carrey must reel himself in for the morereflective scenes, especially in the later sequences. The Majestic(2001) is an uneasy homage to Capraesque patriotism set against theHollywood blacklists; Peter Appleton (Carrey) is accused ofcommunist sympathies and crashes his car on his way out of town.Suffering from amnesia, he ends up in a small town, mistaken for amissing war hero. Carrey’s performance makes his character likeableand has all his desires gratified even after his inadvertent deception isrevealed. In these films, there is a tension between his star personaand the rather more buttoned-down character that he is required torepresent. It is very much this depressive counter to the mania thatMichel Gondry was to exploit in Eternal Sunshine. His relativelysubdued performance seems all the more so in comparison to, say,Liar Liar (1997) where for much of the film Carrey stays at fever



pitch. The combination of gurning, his Jerry Lewis-like movementsand his smile is ‘a key signifier in Carrey’s idiolect’.14

A part such as Joel might be in tension with his pre-existing starpersona. As Henry Jenkins points out:

Most film performances maintain some degree of distance between the star’s

image and the film’s character, though certain types of film (comedy, musical)

focus audience attention on that gap while others (social problem films,

melodramas) efface it as much as possible.15

There is often a shift of gear between ‘acting’ and ‘performance’, the realism of the plot and the comic, knowing exaggeration of thecarnivalesque star turn. In some cases, there is an attempt tonaturalise and frame the performance – a split personality,possession, the gigs of Andy Kaufman within Man on the Moon (andthe films within films of Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind offer a similaralibi for Jack Black), but Carrey’s Fletcher Reede in Liar Liar seemsequally unhinged in the courtroom and outside it, under a spell andnot. Pleasure derives from his comic performance.

Kate WinsletBritish-born Kate Winslet had won a Best Supporting Actress BAFTAfor her role as Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility (1995),but it was playing upper-class Rose DeWitt Bukater who falls in lovewith working-class Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) in theblockbuster Titanic (1997) that made her an international star. Rose’ssexual awakening opens up the possibility of a life beyond marriage –although as Alexandra Keller notes, ‘Rose has led an adventurous butexpensive life’.16 Keller argues that Rose is one in a line of ostensiblyfeminist protagonists in Cameron’s films: ‘Winslet’s high-spirited,loogey-hocking wannabe heiress (or, more to the point, don’t-wannabe heiress) is as independent, smart, idiosyncraticallybeautiful, sexy, powerful, (fill in another complimentary adjectivehere […]) as Cameron’s previous leading women.’17 For Keller, Rose


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