io9.com are running a series of Scifi 101 articles - basically, listing the essential books, TV shows, films etc. that you ought to check out if you're into the science fiction genre. Their list of 25 films includes the usual suspects (2001, Planet of the Apes, Alien, Blade Runner...), but not The Usual Suspects. It does include Eternal Sunshine:

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004, dir. Michel Gondry). This film works on so many levels. It's a metaphor for the ways in which you try to erase someone from your memories and your life, after a breakup, in order to reinvent yourself as a single person. And yet, the film manages to suggest, that process is a form of suicide — you have to destroy a piece of your life in order to excise your former lover from it. And since that process is also the reverse of falling in love, maybe it leads you to realize why you fell for the other person in the first place. But Eternal Sunshine is also an incredibly clever science fiction movie that introduces a bizarre new technology in a way that's both surreal and believable. (Source)

Y'all should check out another film on the list, Primer. I'm crazy about Primer. It's like Memento meets Pi meets Donnie Darko. You could view it online for free a few weeks back, but I think it's been taken offline.

You might know of PostSecret - "an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard." Let me tell you, reading that site can become highly addictive. It's also occasionally NSFW, so beware. ANYWAY. Bryan spotted an Eternal Sunshine postcard on the site, and sent it along:

Canadian blogger/journo Ofelia Legaspi is working her way through The Best DVDs You’ve Never Seen, Just Missed or Almost Forgotten, a book compiled by New York Times film critics. There are 500(ish) films in the book. That's a lot of sitting on your butt. Today Ofelia's tackling Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and contrasting it with Inception.

Kaufman’s characters fight, not in million-dollar action sequences, but inside intimate homes. The only place more intimate and alive than the reality of Clementine and Joel’s lives is when they go back deep in Joel’s repressed memories, through some low-tech brain damage procedure that takes place in a small clinic and in the depressive patient’s own dingy home.

Nolan’s, on the other hand, is a construct that detaches itself from poignant and well-developed emotions the way its inception scenes have the Earth detach from its core. These scenes invoke awe but they seem to serve no purpose other than to showcase the capabilities of a “dream architect” whose mind maze creation is actually more decorative than plot-driven. (Source)

And by brainy I mean not only "folks who're smart," but also "folks who're experts on the brain." Says Patrick:

Charlie Rose hosted a panel tonight with notable brain experts talking about the mind.  One of the researchers defined an emotional cure for stress as "the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Effect."   Thought it was impressive that these professionals recognized the science behind the science fiction.

Nice!

Wedged between The Departed (#13) and Requiem For a Dream (#15), you'll find Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in the IMDB's Best 2000s titles, according to ratings given by users. The Dark Knight clocks in at #1. (Personally, I also like seeing Memento in there at #5 and Donnie Darko at #35.)

For the record, The Maize 2: Forever Yours, Dead at the Box Office and Yyyreek!!! Kosmiczna nominacja are the least popular. Perhaps the titles have something to do with it.

Thanks to Tim B!

Roger Ebert must have Charlie on the brain, because aside from naming Synecdoche, New York the best film of the decade, his latest "Great Movie" entry is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Visiting an old people's home, I walked down a corridor on the floor given over to advanced Alzheimer's parents. Some seemed anxious. Some were angry. Some simply sat there. Knowing nothing of what was happening in their minds, I wondered if the anxious and angry ones had some notion of who they were and that something was wrong. I was reminded of the passive ones while watching "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Wiped free of memory, they exist always in the moment, which they accept because it is everything. (Source)

Thanks, Laurel!

Eternal Sunshine is the second of Charlie's flicks to get a write-up in Salon's "Best of the Decade" feature. Says Nicole Holofcener (writer and director of "Friends With Money," "Lovely & Amazing," "Walking and Talking" and the forthcoming "Please Give."):

I have been thinking about movies, and while it's hard to pick a favorite or a best, or whatever, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" keeps coming up. It captured something so tragic and beautiful about relationships, something that can't even be verbally articulated -- but it was articulated -- through all of the different elements of the film. The first time I saw it, I couldn't get up. I was reduced to a puddle. It affected me in a way that got inside. (Source)

That's the whole article, but it's worth visiting Salon to see what else they've got going on over there.

Asaf Asulin is a music video director / film maker / poet, known locally in Israel, and soon Asaf's second book will be published (in Hebrew). The first poem in the book is inspired by Eternal Sunshine (and possibly Synecdoche, New York).

Here's Asaf's translation - enjoy:

A woman stands at five in the morning / Asaf Asulin

In a main street with a bag
A woman stands at five in the morning.
Previously, you kissed her
Now you're driving home.

She's not interested in your sad images.
But, too late -
She already is
A woman.  A bag. A  main street

Wait till she gets far away,
With the rest of the people in the world,
She will live in the prison head of yours
And keep on waiting there for many years.

Her thoughts will be your thoughts
And she will be lonelier than could be imagined.
The bag won't lose its color to the sun
(Nor, will be out of the fashion)
And her face will never change.
She will have no purpose,
 but you.

Here's a good video essay - blogger Kevin Lee and critic Matt Zoller Seitz (formerly of the New York Times and New York Press), on Eternal Sunshine. Nothing earth-shakingly profound, but worth a look. Lee himself says he wishes he'd had more time to prepare.

Zoller Seitz observes:

I think it speaks to the way we try to keep people alive by remembering them. As long as he can remember her, as long as he can preserve some memory of her, then she is always going to be real, and she’s always going to be present.

In 2006, Seitz's wife abruptly passed away, aged 35. Says Tram (who sent in the link), "It's a nice reminder that good films offer more than just cheap thrills."

Here's the second of three Charlie-centric essays available from Library of Inspiration. This one deals with Eternal Sunshine and, like the other two, it's a quick but enjoyable read:

She’s standing right beside you! The trigger. Remembering. Trying to forget. It can be the time of day. Or maybe the month—the same month you met. A birthday or holiday. It could just be an inexplicable mood, traceable to nothing in particular. The trigger. The weather, a picture, a location, a movie or song. Music always cuts to the chase. You’re watching the news. A word. The trigger. Laughter in a crowd. The appearance of his doppelganger in the Target parking lot. Right over there! Your heart skips a beat. And then, the return to reality.

Any of it can trigger the burst of emotions exploding inside you. The race is on. A frantic search for a memory. Scanning the archives. Dust it off, dust it off, dust it off. Bring back its shine. Make it as vivid as it was when it was real, when it was happening, or at least as vivid as it was last year. Or was it the year before that? Each year dims the lights. The hue changes. You are left with pieces. You fall to pieces. Maybe it’s best if you force yourself to think of something—anything—else. (Source)

Researchers in Brooklyn are getting in on the memory-erasure act, according to the New York Times. You might need to be a subscriber to read the whole thing, but online subscriptions are free. Anyway, a sample:

Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain. Could make you forget a chronic fear, a traumatic loss, even a bad habit.

Researchers in Brooklyn have recently accomplished comparable feats, with a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory, like emotional associations, spatial knowledge or motor skills.

The drug blocks the activity of a substance that the brain apparently needs to retain much of its learned information. And if enhanced, the substance could help ward off dementias and other memory problems.

So far, the research has been done only on animals. But scientists say this memory system is likely to work almost identically in people.

The discovery of such an apparently critical memory molecule, and its many potential uses, are part of the buzz surrounding a field that, in just the past few years, has made the seemingly impossible suddenly probable: neuroscience, the study of the brain.

“If this molecule is as important as it appears to be, you can see the possible implications,” said Dr. Todd C. Sacktor, a 52-year-old neuroscientist who leads the team at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, in Brooklyn, which demonstrated its effect on memory. “For trauma. For addiction, which is a learned behavior. Ultimately for improving memory and learning.” (Source)

This is all well and good, but methinks enough people are already working on developing Eternal Sunshine-like technology. When's someone gonna investigate Malkovich-like technology, eh? Or warehouse-inside-a-warehouse technology?

Thanks to Kennan, Randall and Dave!

If you've ever wondered what the Eternal Sunshine screenplay looks like when it's been translated into Farsi, have I got the PDF for you! Thanks to Filmnegar's Araz for the translation!