Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was never a love story. It was a warning
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a film about the gap between what we think we can control and what happens when reality hits.Over the years, many critics and fans have celebrated Michel Gondry’s film as a tender-hearted love story.But a rewatch might reveal that Gondry’s second collaboration with postmodern American screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is much closer to another, twistier genre: hard sci-fi.By now, the story of Eternal Sunshine is familiar.Depressed introvert Joel (Jim Carrey) meets Clementine (Kate Winslet), whose box-dyed hair colour and moods change as often as the weather.
A mismatch made in heaven.The troubled couple eventually find a fix for their rocky, codependent relationship: a service provided by a sketchy medical company called Lacuna Inc that offers to erase their memories of each other.Clementine goes first.Out of spite, Joel follows.Early on in the film, a nervous Joel asks about the risks of brain damage before committing to the procedure.
Dr Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson), Lacuna Inc’s founder and chief technician, says matter-of-factly: “Technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage,It’s on par with a night of heavy drinking,Nothing you’ll miss,”Joel’s fears are soothed, but mid-procedure, something shifts,Trapped inside his own consciousness, Joel realises he doesn’t want to lose Clementine.
In an attempt to outsmart the Lacuna Inc technicians, he tries to conceal her in his oldest, deepest, most buried memories – childhood moments she was never part of.Hiding under the kitchen table from his mother.Being bullied.Moments that the technicians haven’t mapped out yet on their clunky equipment.Typically, sci-fi films are about what can happen when technology works too well, and the characters can’t handle the ensuing moral and psychological consequences.
Eternal Sunshine, on the other hand, is about technology failing – from the very start.Joel interferes with his own procedure.The Lacuna Inc technicians are hilariously unprofessional.The company founder is sleeping with patients.Everyone’s sloppy, human, compromised.
Most sci-fi aims to demonstrate what happens when you solve the problem.Eternal Sunshine is about what happens when the problem was never solvable in the first place.The film keeps undercutting its own romantic moments with genuinely uncomfortable reality.In flashbacks, Joel calls Clementine “selfish” and “pathetic”.She’s mean to him at parties, dismissive of his interests, gets drunk and embarrassing.
He’s passive-aggressive, judgmental and withdrawn.These aren’t quirky flaws – they’re the day-to-day of two incompatible people hurting each other.Their relationship is doomed from the beginning.Eternal Sunshine, then, is far from a love story – but rather a warning about how technology can’t really fix all our romantic mishaps.In 2004, the idea of erasing someone required literal brain damage.
Now we have a softer, more insidious version: you can curate someone out of existence digitally.Block, unfollow, mute, delete, untag and archive entire text threads.We’ve built the infrastructure for memory erasure into our daily lives.In 2004, scrubbing someone out of our life on purpose was a thought experiment.In 2026, we’re discovering, like Joel, that erasure doesn’t actually work.
We may mute an ex, but their account still exists.We block their number but remember the texts.We archive photos but actually deleting feels too permanent.We’re never fully erasing, never fully remembering.We’re constantly trying to move on without fully committing.
Like the existential terror of time travel narratives like Back to the Future – or even the Sundance-approved cult puzzler Primer – Eternal Sunshine unravels in gloriously non-linear fashion.Scenes interrupt each other.Time scrambles.We are immersed inside Joel’s consciousness, watching memories break apart and warp.As Clementine starts to disappear from Joel’s memories, they have conversations they could never have in linear time.
In one flashback, the couple talks at a beach party, sitting far away from everyone else.“This is it, Joel.I’m going to be gone soon,” Clementine says, knowing they’re existing only briefly in a reconstructed memory.“What do we do?” Rather than scheming, Joel gives up: “Enjoy it.”That’s not romantic in the traditional sense.
Because the version of love that the film believes in isn’t about erasing or curating or controlling, but accepting the whole mess in front of us and choosing it anyway, knowing exactly what we’re signing up for.This is a sci-fi film that argues for accepting our imperfect selves against the illusion of technological perfection.We try to delete.We try to refresh.But really, the best we can do is hope that things can be different this time around.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is available to rent in Australia and available to stream on Mubi in the UK and Hulu in the US.For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
Barclays boss ‘shocked’ by Epstein revelations; BP annual profits slump 16% – as it happened
The chief executive of Barclays has said he is “deeply dismayed and shocked” at the “depravity and the corruption” revealed in the Epstein files, as the bank deals with the fallout of its ex-boss Jes Staley’s ties to the convicted child sex offender.In his first public comments on the matter since the US Department of Justice began publishing documents related to Jeffrey Epstein in December, CS Venkatakrishnan said his thoughts went out to the victims of Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting child sex trafficking charges. He said:I’m very, very deeply dismayed and shocked by the moral depravity and the corruption that you’re reading about in the latest set of instalments. You know, my heart really goes out to victims of this scandal and these crimes.However, the Barclays boss – speaking as the bank reported annual profits – stopped short of commenting directly on allegations against his predecessor, Staley
AstraZeneca CEO hails NHS drug price deal but keeps pause on £200m UK investment
The boss of Britain’s biggest pharmaceutical company has said the government’s recent drug pricing deal is a “very positive step” but is unlikely to unfreeze a paused £200m investment in Cambridge.AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, suggested that a UK-US deal on NHS pricing agreed in December would not be “sufficient” to restart the project to build a research site in the east of England, which was paused in September.Soriot, who has rebuilt the company’s drugs pipeline since 2012 and turned it into the UK’s most valuable listed business, also described the US as “the most attractive market in the world”.During Keir Starmer’s visit to Beijing two weeks ago, AstraZeneca announced $15bn (£11bn) of investments in China, its second-biggest market, and is also pouring $50bn into US factories and labs by 2030.The British drugmaker listed its shares in New York and they began trading on 2 February, but it kept its main stock listing in London
Will the Gulf’s push for its own AI succeed?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. Today in tech, we’re discussing the Persian Gulf countries making a play for sovereignty over their own artificial intelligence in response to an unstable United States. That, and US tech giants’ plans to spend more than $600bn this year alone.I spent most of last week in Doha at the Web Summit Qatar, the Persian Gulf’s new version of the popular annual tech conference. One theme stood out among the speeches I watched and the conversations I had: sovereignty
Apple and Google pledge not to discriminate against third-party apps in UK deal
Apple and Google have committed to avoid discriminating against apps that compete with their own products under an agreement with the UK’s competition watchdog, as they avoided legally binding measures for their mobile platforms.The US tech companies have vowed to be more transparent about vetting third-party apps before letting them on their app stores and not discriminate against third-party apps in app search rankings.They have also agreed not to use data from third-party apps unfairly, such as using information about app updates to tweak their own offerings.Apple has also committed to giving app developers an easier means of requesting use of its features such as the digital wallet, and live translation for AirPod users.The commitments have been secured as part of a new regulatory regime overseen by the Competition and Markets Authority, (CMA), which has the power to impose changes on how Apple and Google operate their mobile platforms after deciding last year that they had “substantial, entrenched” market power
Winter Olympics 2026 day four: more golds for Italy, Norway and Sweden; GB curling heartache – live
This is our top 10 after two runs:It’ll take something for oner of the top two to avoid taking gold; there’s a battle for that, then a battle for bronze.Anyroad up, it’s 0-0 with 10 to go in the first; elsewhere, we’re four minutes away from the resumption of the women’s luge singles. I should say, currently Italy lead Germany by a point, so if this match is a draw they’ll finish higher and take on second place in Group A.Both teams are already into the last eight, but the winner will avoid the winner of Group A – though you’d not back either to even run USA or Canada, the two teams in contention, close.We’re under way in our Italy v Germany Group B women’s ice hockey…Goodness me
‘My needles are waiting’: Ben Ogden credits knitting habit after cross-country silver
Ben Ogden delivered the most significant result in US men’s cross-country skiing in decades on Tuesday afternoon, winning Olympic silver in the men’s sprint classic at the Milano Cortina Games to end a 50-year medal drought.The mustachioed 25-year-old finished in 3min 40.61sec after surging through the final with his trademark classical technique, less than a second behind Norway’s Johannes Høsflot Klæbo, who secured the seventh Olympic gold medal of his career in 3:39.74. Klæbo’s teammate Oskar Opstad Vike took bronze after climbing from 20th in qualifying to the podium
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