Eternal Sunshine

We recently watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in class. The movie, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, involves a pair of opposites that fall in love but eventually each gets their memories of each other erased. This bizarre plot was creative and intriguing, but I felt the story in itself was a little too confusing and jumpy. The acting is great but its just not my type of movie

I would like to focus on the directing and screenwriting. Directed by legendary Michael Godry and written by Charlie Kaufman, it is an excellent example of out-of-the-ordinary film techniques.
The film mostly takes place in Joel's(Carrey) head, while he tries to desperately hold onto memories of Clementine (Winslet.) This allowed for many creative possibilities from Godry and Kaufman, and they delivered.

I was most interested in the scene in the kitchen, where grown-up Joel is reliving his memory of being in his family's kitchen, only the kitchen is in the same respective size as when he was little. This was achieved by brilliant perspective props, which allowed Joel to look tiny but still have the appearance as when he was grown up.

Kaufman is known for his simple techniques to achieve incredible results in his movies, using minimal special effects. Afrter watching a DVD extra on the making of the movie, it was interesting to see that Carrey was able to move across the room three times behind the camera in the same scene.

This unique type of approach to cinematic effects is very interesting and I highly respect both Kaufman and Godry, as well as all the actors, for pulling off such a difficult film.