#SUNSHINE SPOTLESS MIND MOVIE#

In one of the scenes, he wanted me to shake the camera so we could see it was a handheld effect in camera, as opposed to a locked-off superimposition effect or double exposure. He didn’t want them to feel or look completely seamless. “One of the ways Michel wanted to suggest this visually was by calling back to early cinema, where magicians were using live-action practical effects in order to change time and space.

“Much of the syntax of the dramatic action leads you to believe that you’re in a memory, or a memory of a memory, but the reality of where you are in time and space is not exactly clear,” Kuras explains.

#SUNSHINE SPOTLESS MIND MOVIE#

But in practice, you have to be able to light so the camera assistants have a stop to work with to get the movie in focus! I said, ‘Michel, even on a documentary, I wouldn’t shoot exclusively with available light.’” Ellen Kuras, ASC (center) confers with director Michel Gondry (left) while shooting on location.īut running parallel to the director’s desire for naturalism were his decidedly “unnatural” ideas for the film’s transitions between reality and memory. It was important for him not to get overburdened by the lighting, which I agree with in theory. “He felt that the more real the film looked, the more you would believe it when the memories melted into reality. “Starting off, he wanted to shoot the entire movie in practical locations, and he would have preferred me to shoot everything in available light,” says Kuras. The cinematographer soon discovered just how challenging it would be to marry the two halves of Gondry’s vision. Kuras, whose own work often strikes a balance between raw and stylized imagery (notably on Summer of Sam see AC June ’99) proved a perfect match. With its slippery shifts between reality and distorted memories, Eternal Sunshine required a look that could blend location shoot authenticity with unpredictable flashes of whimsy. However, Gondry was eager to depart from the hermetic, studio-bound experience he’d had on a previous Kaufman project, Human Nature. The film’s director of photography, Ellen Kuras, ASC, notes that director Michel Gondry, whose acclaimed music videos “often deal with the morphing of time and space,” was ideally suited to visualize a story whose primary setting is the boundless realm of its protagonist’s memory. Some images may be additional or alternate. This article originally appeared in AC, April 2004. But when Joel accidentally becomes lucid during the procedure and begins to surreally re-experience all of his vivid moments with Clementine, he realizes he has made a grievous mistake, and struggles to mentally preserve the remaining details of his bittersweet love affair. Providing this dubious treatment is Lacuna Inc., whose funky young technicians identify and delete their clients’ troublesome recollections.

Thus, it might be surprising to some that his latest tale, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, follows the universally familiar romantic pattern of “boy meets girl, boy loses girl” - that is, until the point in the story where “boy arranges to have all memory of girl erased.”Įternal Sunshine tells the tragicomic story of Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet), a loving yet hopelessly mismatched couple who, after breaking up, decide to have their painful memories of each other permanently removed. The plots of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s bizarre movies ( Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) have always defied easy description. At top, distraught Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) frantically attempts to stop the process which he's already put into motion. Shot by Ellen Kuras, ASC and directed by Michel Gondry, this innovative tragicomic drama explores a man’s fight to retain his romantic memories.

Sunshine spotless mind