Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
by Andrew Butler
Category: Performing Arts

Imagine you learn that your lover has had you erased from their memory and, in a moment of despair, you have your lover erased from your memory too. Imagine that as you lose your recollections of the bad times together, you realise that you don't want to forget them after all. That's the premise for Charlie Kaufman's Oscar-winning script for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. An instant cult classic, the film's distinctive ambiguity and tangled narrative demands audience engagement and repeated watching. Delving into the central themes of the film, Andrew M. Butler foregrounds its play with genre and audience expectations, its psychoanalytic underpinnings and its debt to Philip K. Dick. Also examining its production processes, Butler explores the against-type casting of Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in lead roles and the intertwined careers of Kaufman and director Michel Gondry. This special edition features original cover artwork by Patricia Derks.