Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a 2004 romance film from Focus Features that uses a science fiction element to explore the nature of memory and love. The film has developed a cult following and was one of the most critically-acclaimed films of 2004.

The screenplay is by Charlie Kaufman, who worked on the story with the film's director, Michel Gondry, and with Pierre Bismuth, a French performance artist. The idea started with Bismuth, who, according to Kaufman, mailed a note to several friends (including Gondry) explaining that he'd had them erased from his memory, in order to see what their reactions would be.

The film stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet and features Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dunst, and Tom Wilkinson. Though Winslet is British, most viewers regarded her American accent as nearly flawless.

It opened in North America on March 19, 2004. The film has consistent high rankings in the IMDBs Top 250.

The movie's title is taken from a few lines from the much longer poem Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope:

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.

Joel Barish (Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Winslet) meet for what they think is the first time on a Long Island Rail Road train from Montauk to Rockville Centre. They are unaccountably drawn to each other despite radically different personalities.

As it turns out, they were once lovers, but after two years their relationship was in a decline. After a nasty fight, Clementine stormed out of Joel's apartment and his life and impulsively hired a New York firm called Lacuna, Inc., to erase all memories of him. Joel was disconsolate upon finding out what she had done and decided to undergo the procedure himself. However, while unconscious and having his memories of her erased, he rebelled, realizing he wanted to hang on to his memories of her after all. Much of the film takes place in Joel's mind as he tries to figure out how to preserve some memory of his love for Clementine. We watch their love and courtship go in reverse, as the memories are slowly erased while Joel tries his best to resist the procedure and hide.

Toward the end of the film it becomes clear that the meeting on the train had actually taken place after the two had had their memories erased.

In separate but related story arcs, the employees of Lacuna are revealed to be more than just employees, in scenes which further demonstrate the harm caused by the memory-altering procedure. Mary (Dunst's character) turns out to have had a relationship with the married doctor who heads the company (played by Wilkinson), a relationship erased from her memory. Once she learns of this, she steals the company's records and sends them to all of its clients. Patrick (Wood's character), lonely and without social skills, became fixated on Clementine and used the personal mementos that she gave to Lacuna to facilitate her "erasure" in order to seduce her. These romantic entanglements turn out to have a critical effect on the main storyline of Joel and Clementine's relationship.

Sometime during or before 2002, Lacuna's Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), who is married, and receptionist Mary Svevo (Kirsten Dunst), who has developed a "crush" on him, have an affair. When it goes bad, Mary decides (or is convinced by Dr. Mierzwiak) to have her memory of their relationship erased. He does not undergo the procedure himself.

During 2002, Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) meet at a beach party in Montauk, New York to which he has been invited by his friends Rob (David Cross) and Carrie (Jane Adams). Joel and Clem sneak into a beach house together, but he gets cold feet and leaves her there. This is the last memory of them together that we see being erased (concluding with him and his friends driving home after the party).

Sometime later, Joel approaches Clementine at the Barnes & Noble where she works and asks her out, in a scene where all the books' covers and spines turn white (which is a device used by the film to show the destruction of that particular memory of Joel's). She accepts, and they become a couple. In late 2002 or early 2003, they take a trip up to the frozen Charles River in Boston and lie on the ice together, in a scene in which Joel tells Clementine that he is "just happy"; this is the first time they have ever been there together, although it is the second time in the course of the movie that the audience sees them there together.

Sometime in late 2003, Joel and Clementine's relationship begins to take a turn for the worse, illustrated in a scene in the Chinese restaurant, where they are the "dining dead".

Sometime in January or early February 2004, Joel and Clementine have a nasty fight at the flea market. They go home and eat Chinese takeout. She gets bored, goes out without him, and comes back at 3 a.m. very drunk and having damaged Joel's car. They have another nasty fight, she storms out, and this is the last time he sees her.

Soon after this, and before Valentine's Day, Clementine gets Joel erased from her memory by Lacuna. Patrick (Elijah Wood), one of Lacuna's technicians, falls for Clementine and uses the mementos of her relationship with Joel that she has surrendered to Lacuna to 'seduce' her.

Sometime closer to Valentine's Day, Joel goes to the bookstore, where she fails to recognize him, and he sees her kissing Patrick. He never actually sees Patrick's face, simply noticing her kissing someone, so when he subsequently recalls this memory, Patrick appears as a faceless person. Joel learns from Rob that she had her memories of him erased and this devastates him.

Just before Valentine's Day, Joel arranges with Lacuna to get his memory erased of Clementine. He is told to bring any mementos that might remind him of Clementine to Lacuna, and he does. That night, February 13, Stan and Patrick go to Joel's apartment to do the procedure. During the beginning part of the procedure, Patrick fumbles with the power settings of the equipment. This apparently leads to Joel's subconsciousness becoming "aware" of what is happening since his "frame of reference" shifts from being something akin to passively watching a movie or television program to being present within the memories themselves and able to interact with them and change them.

Meanwhile, Mary has come over ostensibly to help Stan and Patrick with the procedure. However, given the fact that she and Stan kiss each other, it is obvious that she is there more to see Stan than to do any work. In another development, Patrick calls Clementine and finds out that she is upset about something. He asks Stan for permission to go see her, and once Stan realizes that this will leave him alone with Mary, he tells Patrick to go.

As these "real" events unfold, Joel continues to watch his memories being erased and they gradually shift from the bitter, bleak ones related to his break-up with Clementine to the moments they had together where they were both truly happy. Joel decides that he wants to cancel the procedure. Unfortunately, because he's inside of his own mind, he can't.

While Joel comes to this realization and begins actively resisting the erasure procedure, we see Patrick arrive at Clementine's apartment. She is indeed distraught, expressing fears that she is getting old and that nothing seems to "make sense." Some observers have interpreted a comment by her that she feels like she is "disappearing" as an indication that on some subconscious level, she is being affected by the erasure of Joel's memories of her.

Impulsively, Clementine decides that she wants to go with Patrick to the frozen Charles River, where Patrick tries and fails to reenact the magic of the night that Clementine had described in a love letter to Joel, which Patrick found in Joel's mementos of the relationship.

Meanwhile back at Joel's apartment, Stan and Mary have just finished having sex. Suddenly, an alarm from the machine goes off and Stan discovers that somehow the erasure process has gotten derailed (due to Joel's subconscious resistance). At Mary's insistence, Stan calls Dr. Mierzwiak at his home and informs him that he needs help with the case and Mierzwiak agrees to come over and take charge of things.

Once the doctor arrives, we see very quickly that Mary is still very attracted to Dr. Mierzwiak. Noticing this, Stan goes outside leaving the two alone with Joel. After some awkward talk, Mary kisses the doctor. Mierzwiak initially tries to fend her off, but he quickly begins to kiss her back. However, this train of events is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of the doctor's wife. During this sequence of events, Mary learns of her prior history with the doctor and this is an enormous shock to her. She walks off into the night, leaving Stan and Mierzwiak to complete the erasure.

Despite the distractions described above, Mierzwiak and Stan are able to get the erasure process back on track. Inside Joel's subconsciousness, we see his efforts to fight this fail, and he decides to simply enjoy the memories as they fade away into nothing. The very last memory we see is that of Clementine and Joel meeting at the beach party at Montauk. The climactic moment in this memory is when Joel relives with Clementine the time when they sneaked into a beachhouse at Montauk. Only within the memory, Joel tells Clementine that he wished that he had stayed with her there when it really happened and not gotten nervous and fled. The end of the scene has Clementine telling Joel to "meet me in Montauk."

Valentine's Day 2004, Joel wakes up with his memory erased. He decides to skip work, takes the train to Montauk (acting on the instruction that his memory of Clementine gave him) and (re)meets Clementine there. They go back to her place, have a few drinks, and Joel leaves with her number, promising to call her. When he does, they make a date to go to the frozen Charles the next day (February 15), which they do. (This is the first time we see them on the ice together though it is the second time they are there chronologically.) Meanwhile, Mary has quit her job and starts mailing out the memory files and tapes that she stole from the office to Lacuna's clients (including Clementine and Joel).

The morning after their date on the Charles (i.e., February 16), Joel drives Clementine back to her house. She asks if she can come over to his place to sleep, and then goes inside to gather some toiletries. While she's inside, Patrick approaches Joel and expresses puzzlement over why he is with Clementine after having his memory erased (we see this scene in full at the beginning of the movie and in passing near the end).

Clementine picks up her mail (which includes the file that Mary sent to her the morning of Valentine's Day) and Joel and Clementine drive off. They listen to the tape of her telling Dr. Mierzwiak about Joel prior to her erasure. They both get freaked out, and Joel makes Clementine get out of the car.

Clementine goes home, cries, and then drives herself to Joel's apartment. She finds him there listening to his tape about her, which he found in his mail upon getting home. She insists upon listening, reasoning that it's only fair considering Joel heard all the hurtful things she said about him on her tape. She becomes hurt by some of the things that he says about her on it and decides to leave. Joel follows her into the hallway and asks her to wait, not knowing what to do. Clementine tells Joel that their relationship is bound to fail, based on what they now know about it. However, Joel just shrugs and says "Okay" (indicating that he doesn't care about what may happen in the future).

For a brief moment, Clementine looks bewildered by Joel's response, but then she quickly nods her head. Both of them begin to laugh over the absurdity of the situation. The final shot of the film is of the couple playing in the snow on Montauk Beach, where they had first met. It is unclear whether this scene took place before or after Clementine and Joel had their memories erased and then (re)met.

There were numerous frames of reference in Eternal Sunshine.

One was reality, shown in the group of scenes at the beginning and end of the movie that take place just before, on, and after Valentine's Day.

The rest of the scenes could be broadly classified as taking place in Joel's memory, but these can be subdivided into:

Memories that Joel gets to relive as if they were really happening (e.g., the date on the frozen Charles).
Memories in which Joel narrates in a voiceover (e.g., the "dining dead" meal).
Memories which Joel watches take place and with which he can and does interact.
Memories in which Joel is a participant but can "break character" and change the way the scene turns out.
Memories in which Joel relives various moments of his childhood with Clementine in the place of one of the people in the memory.
Memories that had been erased and lingered on in a degraded form (e.g., the faceless beings in the Lacuna offices).
Some events that actually took place during Joel's erasure (e.g., the technicians Stan (Mark Ruffalo) and Patrick's conversation about Patrick's stealing Clementine's panties) bleed through to memories Joel is reliving.

The Clementine in Joel's memory suggests to his subconscious self that he somehow hide her in other memories in which she did not belong, the idea being that this would somehow enable Joel to remember her after the procedure was over. Joel therefore conjures up memories from his early childhood (the scenes in his mother's kitchen), and when this fails, she urges him to hide her "in his humiliation", which turned out to be scenes in which his mother walks in on him masturbating and where bullies pressure him into hitting a dead bird with a hammer. This does cause problems with the memory-erasing procedure, and leads Dr. Mierzwiak to come over to Joel's apartment to help Stan, which leads to Mary's discovery of her past relationship with the doctor. But, in removing his most humiliating memories, Joel is perhaps made more confident in himself and therefore holds a conversation with Clementine after the erasure procedure.

There are several hints early in the movie that foreshadow Mary's previous relationship with Mierzwiak. When she comes over to see Stan during Joel's procedure, she speaks flatteringly of Mierzwiak's intellect, saying that he should be quoted in Bartlett's. Stan gives a look of exasperation at her fawning over the doctor. When Mierzwiak does come over, she proceeds to fawn over him and mentions some obscure quotes, apparently ones she had used on the doctor before her memory erasure, since Mierzwiak is familiar with them.

Late in the movie, Mary makes her feelings known to the doctor, and they end up kissing. Mrs. Mierzwiak shows up and in the ugly scene that follows, Mary learns that she had had a relationship with Mierzwiak, and she let him erase her memory of it. Devastated, Mary goes to the Lacuna office and listens to her tape. (In a deleted portion of this scene, there is a bit of dialogue in which we learn that Mary had an abortion in the wake of the affair.) Mary clears out her desk, steals all Lacuna's files and tapes, and mails them to their clients, on the grounds that the procedure is morally wrong.

It is ambiguous whether Stan knew of Mary's relationship with Mierzwiak or her undergoing the memory-erasing procedure. At the end of the movie, he emphatically claims that he didn't, that he only saw the two sneaking affections one night, and that she looked "happy" with a secret, but that he only had suspicions. However, when Mierzwiak comes over, Stan is noticeably agitated, not just because of the Joel's procedure being a mess, but of Mary being there. He also honks his van's horn when Mrs. Mierzwiak arrives to warn the two former lovers of her arrival.

When Clementine and Joel meet on the train to Rockville Center (after they've both been erased), Joel doesn't know the song "Oh My Darling, Clementine". But, when they first meet on the beach in Montauk (the real first time they've met, before they'd both been erased), Joel did know the song because of childhood memories hearing it on The Huckleberry Hound Show.

In any case, the lyrics ("you are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry Clementine") are clearly a bit of symbolism.

Charlie Kaufman made it very clear in an interview that the story ended with the final scene of Joel and Clementine in the hallway, in which they had agreed to give their relationship one more try. He said it was up to individual members of the audience to decide what would have ultimately happened.

There is debate as to what the repeated scene of Joel and Clem playing in the snow right before the credits means. In at least one interview, Michel Gondry has said that he wanted the scene of them playing in the snow to loop throughout the credits. This desire apparently sprang from the initial intent that the movie end with the depressing revelation that Joel and Clementine spent the rest of their lives meeting, breaking up, and getting erased, only to meet again. However, Gondry said that this was not done, because it would ultimately detract from the credits.

Several photo-stills that were from footage that wound up on the cutting room floor suggest that film also considered a more explicit "happy" ending since they show Joel and Clementine sitting together with their arms around each other (and dressed in the same clothes that they wore in the hallway scene).

Targeted memory erasure is a fictional non-surgical procedure. Its purpose is the focused erasure of memories, particularly unwanted and painful memories, and it is a mild form of brain damage comparable to a night of heavy alcohol drinking. The procedure is performed exclusively by Lacuna Incorporated. The characters of Joel and Clementine used this procedure to erase the memories of the other. As part of the screenwriting and promotion for the film, a backstory for the technology was created, including a spoof website for "Lacuna Inc." which is the source for the following information.

Lacuna Inc. was the brainchild of Dr. Howard Mierzwiak who after years of neurobiological research developed a painless method for identifying and erasing specific memories. Lacuna Inc. was founded to provide a research facility for the development of this procedure. Over the years, the project has progressed from a mere idea into a full-blown medical service.

After a patient decides what memory he/she is going to have erased, there is some initial preparation that goes into a successful procedure. The patient is instructed to collect any items or mementos that have any ties to the memory/memories being targeted. These items will be used by the Lacuna team during and disposed of following the procedure. This is to ensure that the patient will not have any unexplainable items after the memory erasure.

While connected to a brain scanning device, the patient is instructed to look at the items, and while re-experience the unwanted memories technicians scan brain activity, allowing them to chart and record where the memories are located. The team of Lacuna technicians will use the information they have received from the patient to create a map of the memory. They will then use this map to extract the memory from the patient's mind.

Following the map created specifically for every patient, that patient takes a sedative. A team then uses a device that systematically re-triggers all the memories they have recorded. As they are re-triggered, the targeted memories gradually dissolve while the device erases them. The procedure works on a reverse timeline, which means it begins with the most recent memories and goes backwards in time. This approach is designed to target the emotional core that every memory builds on. By eradicating the core, Lacuna technicians are able to make the entire memory dissolve. When the patient wakes up from the surgery, they remember nothing.

The brain stores emotional memories very differently from unemotional ones. Negative emotional memories, for instance, capture more details about the experience than positive ones. Particularly traumatic memories appear to be captured by two separate parts of the brain: the hippocampus, the normal seat of memory, and the amygdala, one of the brain's emotional centers.

Memories get rewritten every time they're activated, through a process called reconsolidation. Simply put, the very act of recalling a stored memory erases it from storage and to preserve it, it must be stored anew. Instead of simply recalling a memory that had been forged days or months ago, the brain is forging it all over again, in a new associative context. In a sense, when we remember something, we create a new memory, one that is shaped by the changes that have happened to our brain since the memory last occurred to us.

To create a memory, the associative links or synaptic connections between neurons that is at the heart of all learning, you need protein synthesis. If protein synthesis is blocked in a human brain while triggering a memory, the memory is not restored. In the movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this is what the targeted memory erasure procedure does.

The shooting script — which has been published as a book (ISBN 1557046107) — and early drafts contain a fair amount of material that was either left on the cutting room floor or never shot.

A major change that came in editing was that the scene in the beginning with Joel and Clementine on the frozen Charles (the second time they'd been there chronologically) got moved from near the end of the movie to the beginning. According to Kaufman, this was done to make sure the audience liked Clementine, as without it, their initial impression of her, based upon scenes from the end of Joel and Clem's first relationship, might have been too negative. The movie also begins well into the future, with the audience fully aware that Joel and Clementine's memory have been previously erased.

Dropped scenes included dialogue on the train, scenes with Joel and Naomi (the girlfriend he had before Clementine), Joel in the Lacuna office describing his negative feelings about Clementine in more detail, and scenes showing Joel and Clementine on their first "date" date. The dialogue from the deleted Lacuna office scene is used later, when he is listening to a tape of himself describing Clementine's personalty flaws, and some of the dialogue from their first "date" date is used in the last flashback scene, where the beachhouse is crumbling around the two of them. In fact, much of the content of the film was moved around in editing. A fair amount of scenes were changed on-the-spot by director Michel Gondry, including scenes showing the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in the streets of Manhattan.

The soundtrack album for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was released by Hollywood Records on March 16, 2004. It features the score, composed by Los Angeles musician Jon Brion, as well songs from artists E.L.O., The Polyphonic Spree, The Willowz, and Don Nelson. Beck, in a collaboration with Jon Brion, provides a cover version of the Korgis' "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime".

Notably, many of the vocal songs either revolve around memories or the sun.

Brian Eno's Music for Airports (1978), the instrumental version by Bang on a Can (1998).

Tom Waits's Rain Dogs (1985).

The band Circa Survive have a song called "Meet Me In Montauk" on their latest album, Juturna (album) (2005). The title comes from the line Clementine whispers in Joel's ear just before the last memory of her is erased. The song is 14 minutes and 39 seconds long, though only roughly two minutes of the song have to do about the movie itself (the rest is blank noise and, eventually, a hidden track). Lyrics relating to the movie include, "I already forgot how I used to feel about you," and the last line in the song, "you'd mean so much more to me if I remembered".

Track number five on Bayside's 2005 self-titled album is also related to the movie. The song is named "Montauk," and includes lyrics relating directly to the film.

"The lights went out and darkness filled the house on a tiring night under a Long Island sky." These lyrics seem to tie in with the house that Joel and Clementine entered in Montauk on the night they first met.

It goes on, with "I thought I'd known the consequence, but sweetness, can you believe this mess we've made of it?" Which seem to express the regret that Joel, especially, felt after and during the memory-erasing procedure.

Then further in the song, another line reads; "If you hear this and you think you're ready, then meet me in Montauk." The last four words being a direct quote from the movie.

The film is set largely in the New York City suburb of Rockville Centre and Montauk, Long Island, and in New York City.

It was filmed in and around Brooklyn, Manhattan, Montauk, Mount Vernon, Wainscott, and Yonkers, New York; also Bayonne and West Orange, New Jersey.

The library scenes were filmed at the Columbia University Bookstore.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is available in the U.S. in separate anamorphic widescreen and full screen editions as of September 28, 2004. Both widescreen and full screen editions carry English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, English DTS 5.1 Surround and French Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks.

A special widescreen Collector's Edition DVD was released in the U.S. on January 4, 2005.