Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Throughout the many genres of filming, D. W Griffiths’ (David Llewelyn Wark) film, Intolerance (1916) encouraged the beginning of a unique genre of filming; Art House. Art house film’s individuality of filming is targeted at a smaller market audience. Unlike Hollywood cinema, Art house uses a unique strategy of capturing the audience by crossing boundaries and making the basis of the storylines harder to predict, leaving the audience puzzled throughout, and usually after the film has ended.

The tale of Joel and Clementine in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind shows the director Michael Gondry’s ability to withhold the events of a unique romance and shape it into a genre of Art house through its representations and languages. Michael Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was released on March the 19th 2004 in North America with a production budget of $20 million and grossed over US $70 million worldwide. The title is taken from the poem Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope, the story of a tragic love affair, where forgetfulness became the star’s only comfort.

The storyline basis begins with Joel suffering with a heavy break-up with Clementine, a dysfunctional free spirit who decides she wants to erase every memory of her and Joel together. When Joel learns this, he makes his way to the memory erasing company Lacuna Inc. ® and has the procedure done on himself. As he undergoes the process, he realises he wants to keep his recollections of Clementine and subconsciously avoids the erasure of Clementine from his memory.

Typical Hollywood films are limited in their use of camera angles to suit the scene, genre, and storyline, whereas Art house films are unrestricted with plenty of variety of angles, shots, and scene layouts. Gondry filmed in a near-documentary style, giving a large range of camera angles. In the scene where Joel is under the table, in discussion of Joel and Michael Gondry, the table was set up to be heighted differently, and furniture was made larger towards the back of the set to give the effect that Joel was miniature.

The director chose to make the film in a non-chronological order, with many of the more imaginative sequences being set deep in Joel’s mind, as he invades his own memories to keep them from slipping away. Other effects used were in-camera tricks of the eye and lense of the camera used. According to the end credits, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was filmed in and around Brooklyn, Manhattan, Montauk, Mount Vernon, Wainscott, and Yonkers, New York and also in Bayonne and West Orange in New Jersey.

The unusual layout of the scenes were arbitrarily set in a way which confuses the viewer and puzzles their mindset on the events occurring throughout the movie. Art house Cinema is a genre in which specific events occur without reason throughout the many films of Art house, and in which are never explained throughout the entire film. The symbolism Gondry has created throughout the film would not usually relate to the conventional Hollywood films. Within most Hollywood films, scenes are set to suit to the stereotypical genre. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind uses many scenes with critical symbolism, such as the use of sand.

The use of sand throughout the erasure of Joel’s memories of Clementine reflects upon the Storyline as its constant use of sand in the scenes symbolise Joel’s memories of Clementine are literally slipping through his mind just as sand slips through an hour glass. Another important use of recognised symbolism was throughout the entire subconscious mind of Joel, in which Clementine’s hair was the colour set of the season. For example, throughout the memories of summer, Clementine’s hair was Tangerine and brightly coloured, as summer is bright, and the scene appears to have a lot of brightness.

Throughout the genre of typical Hollywood films, the scenes would not appeal as much and have such recognisable symbolism, as Art house Cinema’s genre permits to give as much symbolism to the audience as possible, just like an art painting, there must be symbolism to the painting or it will not have its own individual theme. Usually an Art house film would be completely not recommended for children, most art house films are rated MA 15+ and also the scenario would completely be misunderstood, in the sense that they would not grasp any of the concepts, symbolism, which all forms the understand of an Art house film.

Considering Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an MA15+ (R 18+ USA) the viewing is for the eyes of young adolescents in which whether their maturity level will provide meaning and understanding of the film. For the viewer’s attention to be grabbed, they must be pulled in by the unsolved mysteries which the film usually withholds, for example, why a certain event occurred, why a specific scene was in there. As Art house films usually structure their design in peculiar ways, they don’t rarely expose the mystery, and questions pondering in the minds of the audience unlike the typical, large marketed, Hollywood films.

Art house films generate their storylines fictionally, and usually surreal, with writers who have a vast imagination. Art house is the epitome of rule breaking, fantasy and fictional characters. The audience views a style that not only frees the limits of a story line, but manipulates and shapes the minds of the audience to be captured in the film. The director, Michael Gondry designed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind through obscure and surreal techniques, and undeniably provides an example of an Art House film. The film exhibits representations and languages that all form appropriately into the genre of Art house. BIBLIOGRAPHY ttp://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Art_film – What is art house films, founder of art house, beginner etc. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Eternal_Sunshine_of_the_Spotless_Mind#Film_setting_and_locations – Release, gross http://www. filmeducation. org/pdf/film/EternalSunshine. pdf – Technology used, Budget for movie & estimated budget http://hollywoodjesus. com/eternal_sunshine. htm – Symbolism http://alisonsdirectorstudy. weebly. com/1/post/2010/03/symbolism-in-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind. html – Symbolism http://www. imdb. com/title/tt0338013/ – Rating http://hhsdrama. com/documents/LectureEternalSunshine. pdf – basic research