Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)

Welcome to 'Don't You Want Me?' - a podcast series taking a lighthearted look at the most relatable, intriguing and dysfunctional relationships in film. 

In this unusually vulnerable Valentine’s Day episode, we’re exploring Michel Gondry’s 2004 critically acclaimed romantic drama Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Written by Charlie Kaufman, who won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his work on the movie, this film saw both he and Gondry attempting to deal with the trickiest theme out there: love. Anthony Lane wrote in the New Yorker ‘In creating a pair of lovers who forget each other and then click all over again, they suggest that every one of us harbours an inextinguishable need, and that we helplessly swing back toward our soul mate, as if he or she were a living magnetic north.’ Tonight we’ll be stumbling out onto the ice with Joel, played by Jim Carrey, and Clementine, played by Kate Winslet. Is theirs a love that we can use to justify Valentine’s Day? Or is it a just holiday invented by greeting card companies to make people feel like crap?

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Recorded in January 2022.

Edited by Rich Nelson

Additional material written by Catrin Lowe 

Theme music by Paul Abbott (on Twitter @Pablovich)

Design by NOAKE (on Instagram @n_o_a_k_e)

Rich can be found on Twitter @Fantana275

Cat can be found on Twitter @KittyCostanza