Loads of places published pieces on Eternal Sunshine in the last month or so, to celebrate the film's 20th(!!) anniversary. I posted some links here, I'll be posting more later this week, and I'm posting some right here as well:
Scott Tobias from the Guardian calls Eternal Sunshine a love story that's impossible to forget:
One of the reasons why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, now 20 years old, ranks among the best love stories of the 21st century is that it makes the unique argument that failure is an essential, precious part of romantic experience. It’s only human to want that pain to go away, but the film suggests that literally making it so would be a wish on a monkey’s paw, offering some short-term relief, perhaps, but with unanticipated long-term consequences. People usually have many more failed relationships before one that succeeds, after all, and the accumulation of experience and memory not only means something, but that meaning isn’t static. Bitter moments can turn bittersweet. (Source)
Inverse's Barry Levitt says The Best Sci-Fi Romance of the Century Predicted Our Bleak Relationship With Technology:
Watched today, the film has a striking prescience. There’s a chilling quality to the replaying of memories that Joel experiences while deleting Clementine. As he tries to cling to specifics, details from his memories literally fade away. It’s not unlike the way we process memories in the digital age: scrolling through your phone’s camera roll to recall treasured private moments, poring through your exes' social media accounts to see if you’re still a fixture, reading through old text messages to try and figure out who was responsible for the breakup. (Source)
Hasitha Fernando looks at the story behind Eternal Sunshine at Flickering Myth:
Starting its journey as a conceptual art experiment Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind has gone on to win the hearts and minds of audiences and film critics through its unique exploration of romantic relationships and their inevitable fallout, all brought to life through Michel Gondry’s remarkable visuals, Charlie Kaufman’s fiercely original script and a duet of exquisite performances by both Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. (Source)
Some good bits of behind-the-scenes trivia in that one, and also this one at indieWIRE:
10 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’
'Eternal Sunshine’ was developed and pitched in the late ’90s, as Kaufman took his time to write the screenplay. In 2000, however, he very nearly abandoned the project altogether when Christopher Nolan released his thriller ‘Memento,’ about a man who suffers from retrograde amnesia attempting to solve a complex mystery. Kaufman worried that the film’s themes were too similar to ‘Eternal Sunshine,’ and nearly canceled the project altogether. However, he ultimately made the project after producer Steve Golin convinced him to continue. (Source)
Even the film's music has stayed in in the hearts and minds of people, says Sage Dunlap at Paste:
20 Years Later, Jon Brion’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Score Remains Unforgettable
In his compositions, Brion combines impassioned strings and electronic production to translate a character’s mental landscape into an evocative sonic profile. Eternal Sunshine is no exception, and it marks the first of Brion’s two scores for a Kaufman screenplay. Brion also composed music for Synecdoche, New York, where he, once again, excelled in bringing sound to a surrealist representation of a character’s mind; in Eternal Sunshine’s case, Brion captures post-breakup Joel in awake and sedated states—withdrawn in the former, disoriented in the latter, aching in both. To make up for the character’s lack of spoken transparency about his feelings—something Clementine points out—Brion’s score becomes key for bringing Joel’s thoughts to the surface. (Source)
And we ain't done yet with the commemorative Eternal articles! I'll be back with more soon.
