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Script Study

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A Screenwriting Blog for writers looking to expand their understanding of screenplays. Script Study helps you better understand your screenplay by using an out-of-the-box lens to deconstruct structure, format, dialogue, beats, plot, creation, character, themes, workflow, and behind-the-scenes processes.


Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind - Script Study

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Film: Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind

Screenplay by: Charlie Kaufman

 

Time is my favourite theme and structural tool to use in films. It is is present in this film as the story is told out of sequence, jumping around in time. There are large parts of the film that take place entirely in the mind of its protagonist Joel Barish (Carrey) as his memories are being erased. My favourite types of film I like to write often bridge supernatural elements - invisibly interwoven into the world-building - with strong psychological character-driven through lines. Achieving this mix of sci-fi territory and quasi-romance-drama is a delicate act to get right. 

You often have to build in the sci-fi elements in subtle and believable ways. If downplaying the sci-fi was his goal, Kaufman has basically succeeded. Eternal Sunshine has none of the bigger- than-life trappings of Hollywood sci-fi. The memory-erasing machine has no overstuffed dentist chair with ominous restraints, and there’s no menacing apparatus attached to the subject’s head. Kaufman’s sci-fi/fantasy element seems as pedestrian as a Dell™ laptop. There’s no dark conspiracy erasing memories; the characters have freely chosen to have their memories of their bad love affairs erased. The fate of Earth (or another planet) doesn’t hang in the balance. The movie’s concerns are at a more human scale: What makes a love affair good or bad? Would we be better off without our painful memories, or do we need them to learn? And, in the end, what makes us fall in love, anyway?

Like the very best science-fiction and fantasy writing, Eternal Sunshine uses its fantasy elements to conjure a situation that illuminates something important about the human condition. So, the question isn’t whether Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is science fiction, it’s why more science fiction isn’t this ambitious. 

This typically Kaufmanesque story could arguably be called best screenplay he’s ever written. This film is personally one of my top 5 of all time. 

 
Shane Patrick