by Aaron West
2004. Written by Charlie Kaufman. Directed by Michel Gondry
It seems like yesterday when I first read the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind script. Charlie Kaufman was the “it” screenwriter, having just been won over the indie world for Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. As impressive as that script had been, I was assured by a cinephile friend that Sunshine was even better. I remember starting the script late at night, planning on finishing the following day. I was enraptured. Several hours later, the script was finished, and my mind was blown. I immediately considered it to be one of the finest scripts I’d ever read. I also considered it to be so high concept that it would be nearly unfilmable.
Fortunately Gondry and his stellar cast were up to the task at capturing the essence of such brilliant writing. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet embodied both the magnetic romanticism and also the tortuous misery they created for each other. We can understand why they loved and why they hated each other, why they would want to literally erase the memory of one another, and why they may fight to keep those precious memories intact.
In this countdown, we have talked about a wide range of science fiction films, with some that use it as a means of explaining a world philosophy, and other, lighter-fare that perhaps explores a foreign world or tries to withstand the attacks of a gigantic, scientifically mutated monster. Sunshine is unquestionably science fiction, but is also a bit of an outlier when compared with many of the films on this list. It more closely resembles a romantic drama, yet fits with the genre due to the clever concept. The science is a technology that may on the surface sound reasonable today – we can all wrap our brains around the idea of deleting something with a computer. (more…)
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