Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the million-dollar frame
Films are a consuming obsession, with it being ridiculously easy for me to get carried away both in watching and discussing them, but it pays off. Big time. In this piece, I would like to step away from my usual formula of essentially spoiling the shit out of a movie and rambling on about it, and instead fully commit myself to exploring one particular frame I absolutely loved in the iconic 2004 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Why bother anyway?
To start off, I’d like to quickly ascertain the value of a single frame, or seemingly, lack thereof — after all, for me, film is more about the holistic, the emotional, and not the particular and limited; value lies where there is interpretational space, and space likes time. This means that fixating on a singular frame would effectively go against my viewer’s instinct and preference — but that is complete and utter bullshit. Of course films are meant as a whole, and of course to appreciate their art we need to look at the big (entire) picture, but, the definition of film is quite literally that of a series of pictures — hence, in my mind, even with a single frame different, a movie is effectively changed from the ground up — why? Because of frames like this one, shots that resonate and hit like no other, that fundamentally matter because they are paintings within a film, they are beautiful and necessary ipso facto being part of the picture.
Okay. Wow.
When I saw it for the first time, I was instantly sold. The shot itself has one fundamental principle, intimacy, however it quickly evolves into so much more thanks to the genius work behind the scenes that was transferred on-screen — we see a painting of bliss enshrouded by all-consuming chaos, the sheets, a symbol of protection and warmth, transformed into ominous, fiery, dense clouds, with this whole spectacle taking place right above Clementine’s head, viewed close-up from Joel’s perspective.
Clementine’s eyes are closed, a manifestation of the fleeting nature of human experience, and materialization of the core idea behind the movie — the act of closing her eyes is no more merely a physical action, but rather a symbol of her attitude, wanting to forget, be closed off, to run away.
The juxtaposition between the already meaning-packed image of sleeping Clementine and the fire-red sea of sheets overhead is nothing short of brilliant and serves as a pungent reminder of both characters’ internal conflicts at hand — they’re fighting not only the consequences of acting on the impulse to ease the pain of a relationship-turned-sour, but they are also actively reconciling with entire parts of themselves, building their self back up and tearing down the parts they no longer see fitting.
What can we learn from this?
We often feel the world collapsing onto our shoulders, the weight of simply existing and functioning being so much to bear at times. For me, this frame captures at least part of the essence of the intrinsic human condition of helplessness, and a sort of existential dismay that is so prevalent; “working through” life is a neverending and never-finished process we all find ourselves stuck in, for better or for worse, and at times, we seek solace in exactly the way we see from Clementine — shutting the noise out and mentally de-escalating, in the sometimes-too-warm, often disordered and plain confusing embrace of what is just… being.
