1 – Michel Gondry likes it when unexpected problems such as weather issues force him to think on the fly . “It makes everybody workfaster, with more energy”. Can you spot any scene in the film where improvisation of actors or of any scene might have been constructed in the making due to unexpected circumstances? How does that affect the theme of time?
In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the director (Michel Gondry) told the actors to improvise whenever they see the opportunity to make the film more interesting. I read on IMDb that the train scene where Clementine punches Joel wasn't on the script. Jim Careys reaction was genuinely surprised which is why the director decided to keep the scene in.
2 - The idea of the film started from the concept of an artist, friend with Gondry, who thought of “sending a card to people mentioning they had been erased from the memory of someone they knew. He wanted to study their reaction as part of an art experiment”. Howdid this idea developed into the film written by Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman? How does this idea affect the idea of time in the film?
They developed the idea by tweaking it slightly, instead of getting a card saying that they had been erased from someone they knew, the director decided to make the card addressed to the person's friends/ relatives so that the person wouldn't find out. This would cause the main character confusion and sadness and also creates an interesting dilemma around disclosing things to those involved. The film is non-linear and time chops and changes throughout the film as different memories are explored.
3 – Most visual tricks in the film are made in an old-fashoned way with a camera and no digital means. Can you identify some ofthose?
The film uses a lot of different visual tricks, there is one scene in Joels memory of when Clementine is walking/running away from Joel, Joel gets in his car and drives after Clementine, he stops, gets out and starts running after her. However when it looks like Joel has go to the end of the road, the frame suddenly inverts to the opposite side he started running from, so the audience saw Joels car again. If you look really carefully at the scene, you will notice that the shop names have been clearly inverted as the letters of 'supermarket' is backwards.
4 – The film results in a fractured narrative about memory and loss. How does that display itself in the film? Which elements work towards this objective?
The film is non-linear as we see an arranged sequence of Joel's memories repeated out of order. The transition techniques the film uses are intentionally unrealistic and different, for example, when transitioning from a memory to another. We see Joel in the library when he first found out Clementine not recognising who he is, he walks out and as he walks out the lights turn off one by one behind him, he walks through an archway and suddenly Joel is in Rob and Carries house. I think that the transitioning plays a really important part in the film this is because it represents the difference between real life and the scenes of Joel's memories.