eternal sunshine of the spotless mind (2004): formalism

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) raises a multitude of questions about love, ethics, and the human psyche. It also offers an array of choppy and tilted shots, impossible sets which morph and disintegrate, and wildly changing colors and shapes that make the film a poster child of "formalism"-- the thought that the focus of a film should be on the style rather than content.

• Sunshine asks us if ignorance is truly bliss-- that is, whether an erased memory can still have an impact on our minds and souls. After Clem has had Joel erased from her memory, she appears easily agitated, confused, and upset when elements of her life with Joel re-enter her surroundings. The instability of Joel and Clem's lives post-erasure is conveyed through the almost dizzying and swinging camera angles, bringing an anxious touch to the film. When we enter Joel's dream world, the camera angles, colors, and sets become extremely surreal. However, even in the opening scene full of moving full shots that ruffle past his bedroom and showcase his unsure body language, that surrealism and anxiety is present. This tells us that the extreme instability of Joel's world and surroundings in the dream are still present-- albeit much more subtly-- in real life after the erasure of the pair's memories.
• To further this from Clem's perspective, Clem and Patrick are shown post-erasure on the frozen river to which Clem once took Joel. The high-angle shot of them laying on the ice is a parallel shot to a former (chronologically) shot of her and Joel, however the differences in shadow and her facial expressions convey that something about this setup is vastly confusing and wrong. The bird's eye view traps them and Clementine scrambles to escape from a scenario that she once found peaceful.

• Aside from the trippy camera perspective, the film's highly symbolic use of color is a multifunctional device used to clarify the passage of time and the stages of Joel and Clem's relationship (from her personal perspective). The viewer can eventually map out that Clem's hair is green upon their first meeting, orange and red during their relationship, and blue in "real time"-- after the erasure of their memories. It's possible that the colors convey emotional meaning as well. The green might convey new life and birth. The red represents a bold, bright, "glory days" time in which Joel and Clem are happy together. That color begins to fade to a dull orange as their relationship falls apart. She changes the color abruptly from warm orange to a cool dark blue post-Joel-- signifying a rapid change in thought (returning to a cool color, as her hair was before she met Joel) as well as the literal idea of being "blue", depressed and uncomfortable with no clue as to why. When Joel remembers Clementine as they race around the dream world trying to escape the erasers, her hair is a bold red-orange, signifying that he ultimately chooses to remember her as a boldly positive force in his life.