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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was first released in 2004 by French director Michel Gondry, having been written by Charlie Kaufman and Pierre Bismuth as well as Gondry (right, with Carrey).
The cast is uniformly good, led by Jim Carrey (in a significant departure from his previous zany roles) and Kate Winslet (7 years after Titanic) with a number of others who were well on their way to much greater recognition: Tom Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, and Kirsten Dunst.
The film is a quirky and charming story about love, relationships, and memory. What sets it apart from standard predictable romcoms is the Sci-Fi premise at its heart: a neurological technique that enables a “psychiatrist” to probe inside a person’s brain to identify and then delete undesired memories. But as often, the technique is a mere plot device and so fairly marginal to the film’s heart. It is visually stunning but psychologically profound and thought-provoking.
The film won Best Screenplay Oscar in 2005 as well as several other screenplay gongs, and Kate Winslet was nominated for an Oscar too.
Other links:
- Severance TV series
- The film’s title was taken from the longer poem Eloisa to Abelard, by the Augustan age poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) using a phrase that reflects the potential bliss that comes from having no memory of painful experiences.
- The neuroscience behind Eternal Sunshine (though much of this is probably long past its sell-by-date).
Ghosteen is a double-album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, produced by Cave and long-standing bandmember Warren Ellis. It followed their 2016 studio album Skeleton Key, a work that was near completion when Cave’s son Arthur was killed in a fall while aged only 15. Despite that, that album as a whole felt strangely prescient of the coming tragedy with its themes of loss and grief.
But by the time Ghosteen came out, Cave and his wife Susie, had processed much, though by no means all, of their pain. This perhaps inevitably was kneaded into this album, which unusually these days works best when considered as a united whole. The Caves’ very private tragedy had been exposed all too publicly. But the remarkable aspect of this music is how powerful it has subsequently proved for countless others experiencing their own grief. While never as concrete or explicit (not least because it is a musical and poetic work rather than a book), it is not surprising that some have responded to it as they have to C. S. Lewis’s poignant final book, A Grief Observed.
- A great review of the album by Alexis Petridis
- Sign up to Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files, a weekly newsletter in which he answers one or more questions from people all over the world. Some are quirky, some blunt, some profound, some deeply pastoral. A weekly highlight for many of us!
- Faith Hope and Carnage: the wonderfully provocative and moving record of conversations between Nick Cave and his friend, the journalist Seán O’Hagan.
- A fascinating conversation between Nick and historian and podcaster Tom Holland for Unherd (though you’ll need to pay £1 to see more than just this teaser)
Chinua Achebe (1930-2013) was a Nigerian novelist and academic who pioneered, and thus helped to create interest in, African fiction in particular, and post-colonial fiction more generally. Things Fall Apart, coming out in 1958, was the game-changer, the first of what would become The African Trilogy.
Growing up in British-ruled Nigeria as a proud member of the Igbo people group, Achebe was acutely conscious of how perceptions of Africa and Africans were shaped almost exclusively by white writers and reporters. And like that best morsel of writerly advice, if you don’t see the books you want to read on the shelves, then you’ll have to write them yourself.
Here is another title taken from verse. In this case, its title is taken from W. B. Yeats’ highly influential poem (one we had to learn by heart at school, although I was always rubbish at that): The Second Coming, a poem that feels as relevant these days as it ever did.
The book is full of wonderful character descriptions and gives a vivid sense of the complex social interactions of a whole host of different people. So to help navigate, we came up with a cast list of the key players:
For follow up:
- An Annenberg Learner introduction to the novel, including commentary and background information.
- Chinua Achebe’s groundbreaking essay on Joseph Conrad’s famous novel: An Image of Africa – Racism in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”
- Recent news that A24 are working on a new TV adaptation, headed by Idris Elba.
Masterpieces we’re jealous of:
- Joel’s favourite painting (see below: are you able to identify it? Do let us know!)
- Sophie’s choice: graphic book The Trouble With Women by Jacky Fleming
- Mark’s choice: Graham Greene’s masterpiece, The Power and the Glory.
