Forget about me! (Original title, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) It’s not the first film to use a science fiction device as an excuse to tell a fable about love, loss and identity. However, there is something about the feature film directed by Michel Gondry and written by Charlie Kaufman that makes it impossible to erase from memory, two decades after its release. Starring two of the stars of the moment – Jim Carrey, who saw in it the dramatic role he was looking for to change his image as a comedy actor, and Kate Winslet, who has been consecrated since Titanic (1997)—, the film was already a milestone at the time: the reviews were outstanding; it grossed $74 million worldwide against a budget of around $20 million; it won the Oscar for best original screenplay and Winslet was nominated for best actress.
And even today it is a cult film and appears on lists of the best films of the century, such as that of The Hollywood Reporter 2023. “It’s one of my favorites to watch on my own on Valentine’s Day,” she says. Film critic Kyle Turner in a video call to ICON from his apartment in New York. “As dysfunctional as Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet’s characters are, and regardless of whether or not they have memories of each other, they still have an intuitive connection that makes them seek each other out.”
In the film, Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play Joel and Clementine, two strangers who meet on a bus but feel an inexplicable mutual attraction. They will gradually discover that they had a two-year relationship full of ups and downs and underwent a procedure to erase from their memory any memory of the other’s existence.
Turner, who describes himself as “an incurable romantic,” is the author of The Queer Film Guide and has written for GQ and The New York TimesHe believes that “the great legacy of this film is to be able to aesthetically articulate the absurdity of being in love while offering a visual language to the process of falling in love with someone and trying to understand them in a different light.” This is due in large part to the direction of the Frenchman Michel Gondry, who creates an unforgettable dream world in the sequences that develop within Joel’s memories and that make up the bulk of the film.
“Michel Gondry has had an uneven career, which I think is common among filmmakers who start out making music videos,” says the film critic. “The visual effects in this film are incredible because they complement the dreamlike logic: a door that takes you to a completely different place, the disorientation of whether you are an adult or a child, the people in your life appearing in a nebulous way.”
Another of the film’s main characters is Charlie Kaufman’s script, with its characteristic games with the perception of reality, and the feelings of alienation and insecurity in human relationships. Kaufman, who in 2004 had already garnered praise for How to be John Malkovich and Adaptation. The orchid thief, Under the direction of Spike Jonze, it would win the Oscar for best original screenplay in 2005 for Forget About Me!
The nightmare of the girl of your dreams
All of the above does not mean that the film has been spared from criticism. The main one being that Clementine could be a manic pixie dream girl. This is a female archetype that could be described as “the crazy girl of your dreams”, coined by film critic Nathan Rabin in 2007: “She is a bubbly, shallow cinematic creature who exists only in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writers and directors”, designed “to teach young, insecure men to embrace life and its endless mysteries and adventures”. In other words, the term defines an eccentric girl, full of spark, different from other women, who bursts into the life of a sad, grey guy to change it forever.
Romantic comedies, from Annie Hall (1977) until 500 Days Together (2009), have been populated by this stereotypical ideal of a woman who heals with her magic the limitations of single and neurotic men. Is Clementine then a kind of manic pixie dream girl? “I give the benefit of the doubt to Charlie Kaufman, who is a very intelligent screenwriter,” argues Turner, who points out that although the film was released a few years before Rabin came up with the term, the screenwriter of How to be John Malkovich He was certainly aware of cinematic archetypes in order to deconstruct them.
At first glance, Kate Winslet’s role seems like this fantasy, with her dyed hair and spontaneous plans, such as walking on a frozen river or making dolls out of potatoes. The fact that for much of the film, what we see of Clementine is her image inside the mind of Jim Carrey’s character doesn’t help. However, As Rabin himself noted in his review of Forget About Me!Kaufman’s script sets up and takes down the fantasy of the girl of your dreams. Rabin highlights a line from Clementine herself as an example of her critical status vis-a-vis the wacky pixies: “A lot of men think I’m a concept, or maybe I complement them, or that I’m going to give them life. I’m just a screwed-up woman looking for my own peace.”
Turner says that while he understands the criticism of Kate Winslet’s character, he believes that Clementine’s need for greater freedom and autonomy and the way it clashes with Joel’s expectations of a conventional, domestic relationship are part of the film’s central conflict. “They are both attracted to an element that is foreign to their own lives, but at the same time is the basis of their incompatibility,” says the film critic.
Electronic mirages, artificial paradises
The mix of romance and science fiction sounded new when Forget about me! It was released in 2004, but it has only gained relevance in the last two decades, as technology has become inseparable from everyday reality. There is now a certain nostalgic charm in seeing Joel and Clementine express their relationship in letters and photographs or, in a world where technology allows memories to be manipulated, that they don’t have a cell phone.
The last 20 years have brought films that delve into the same theme of love and technology, such as Her —written and directed by Spike Jonze, a frequent collaborator of Charlie Kaufman—, Never leave meor some chapters of the anthology series Black Mirrorthe most famous, San Junipero“Technology is part of our daily lives. We are seeing it right now. We are seeing and talking to each other despite being hundreds of miles apart,” says science fiction writer Cristina Jurado in a video call for ICON. It is not new. Frankenstein, Considered the first science fiction novel, it was born from the fascination of its author, Mary Shelley, with the scientific theories in vogue at that time after suffering a spontaneous abortion. Films such as Solaris, by Tarkovski, or the two installments of Blade Runner, are examples of stories that seek to solve the feeling of loss and loneliness through technological advances. “Science fiction in this film is more than anything an excuse to talk about relationships,” says the writer, winner of the Ignotus Award from the Spanish Association of Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror in 2016 and 2017. “There is a certain social criticism: why do we aspire to a perfect life in an artificial way?”
Turner, for his part, believes that the film can be understood as the triumph of humanity, despite its imperfections, over technology: “Although both have successfully managed to erase the memory of the other from their minds, they manage to find each other and attract each other. There is a human longing to create a bond, and that surpasses any technology.” Jurado delves deeper into the idea: “Technology is used to achieve what we cannot achieve on our own. It often isolates us, but we also seek it out to escape that isolation,” argues Jurado, adding: “In the end there is nothing that protects you from reality. There will always be something that will remind you that you are human and that you suffer and that pain is ultimately part of your humanity.” And that, in the end, says Turner, is the moral of the story: “Even if you erase the presence of someone from your past, you will always carry the experience of having had that person in your life. Who we are is shaped by our experiences and the people around us.”
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