'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' is an incredibly well planned, intricate film that you really have to pay attention to and think throughout. The randomness and maze-like ordering of scenes is extremely rare and possibly unique to itself. As a film, the quality level of cinematic techniques play key roles in the enhancement of the messages made across.The music and lighting in this film are both subtle and well placed to suit this random film, especially the two messages; 'Accept who you are' and 'Everything happens for a reason'. These two cinematic techniques almost have a different setting for each 'time slot' in the film. One section of time may have harsh lighting and slightly heavier/angrier music, another section may have soft, mellow lighting and sympathetic music and then another section may have 'sunny' lighting and happy music. Music is related to as the 'language of emotion', which is likely why it fits in with these two messages; they're very close to heart messages, the lighting just enhances the music thus enhancing the messages.'Don't focus on the bad' is a message that is really brought to it's full glory with the cinematic technique aid of the mind erasing scenes. The obscurity of the scenes in which Joel (Jim Carey, main) is having his mind erased of Clementine (Kate Winslet, second main) is created mainly by computer work eg: making houses disintegrate whilst they're talking in the doorway. What you realise, from the help of cinema, during these scenes is that Joel and Clementine were focusing on the bad times of their relationship; fights, fear, mistrust, disappointment etc instead of the good times; running on the beach, late sleep ins, going out together etc. You see this focus in these scenes and their realisation of it actually in the erasing of Joel's mind; they're having a conversation in the disintegrating house which he ran out of initially and left her there unexplained, but this time in a dream -like sequence they decide to stay and meet back there in real life to stay together in happiness this time. None of this would have made sense that they were focusing on the bad without the help of this cinematic technique and with these happenings you, as an audience, come to the realisation of the message behind this work.The two messages 'You don't know what you've got until its gone' and 'Think before you act' common logical messages that are very powerful and can be portrayed in many ways. They are brought to the audience through the obscure non-linear narrative and parallel plotting of the film. The way that the film skips randomly from Joel and Clementine meeting again and to him crying because he's found out she had her mind erased of him, to them meeting the second time again, to him getting his mind erased, to the memories of their first relationship, to them discovering their minds have been erased and starting again with all the sub-plots really gives the audience to get into the characters to progress to the realisation of the messages. If Clementine had stuck with Joel the first time and tried to work through it all maturely instead of storming off and getting her mind erased could have saved a lot of useless problems to happen and there was the chance she could have lost her love forever, which comes to the message 'Think before you act'. When Joel is going through the dreams of his mind being erased, he's subconsciously coming to the realisation that he doesn't want to lose Clementine until she's almost gone, which is how his mind somehow gets him to meet her again. When they both listen to the tapes of their mind erasing, they both realise that they had a love and want to explore that again thankfully since they got the chance because they've realised they 'Didn't know what they had until it was gone' and since this is a movie they got the rare second chance.In conclusion, I think that this film told the story in a unique and perfect way and couldn't have been put into novel form, as there is too much visual that you need to understand the story without getting lost. The director could have gone on a typical linear narrative but I don't think the film would have been as powerful to an audience that way. The cinematic techniques talked and not talked about along with the messages talked and not talked about are tremendously well planned and my compliments go to all those technicians. An impressionistic film.1. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless mind, film.
