“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is a very unique film. It strikes a cord with certain themes and emotions of love and relationships that I haven’t seen done by other films. It does it more effectively than other films.

The film is made up of connected episodes that weave together to form the basis of the story. The shooting and editing style is also something that feels intensely unique.

I love the style of this film. The camera work is fairly fantastic. Almost every shot is handheld. It gives this gritty, amateur, frantic attitude to the film that is carried out in many of the other aspects. The editing, particularly some of the transitions, can be pretty eye catching. The heavy use of whipping, blurs, and strange shot composition and placement of the subject add to this effect.

It would seem amateur if it weren’t for its artistic effectiveness and blatant intentionality to the film’s message. The film adds movement and excitement to boring situations in the film. Sitting in a room, walking down a street, or basic conversations become very interesting due to flashy and energetic camerawork and editing.

There also visual effects added in post-production that I found enticing. Like blurs, colored lighting, and some lightening and darkening mid-shot. Some of this may have been done without post-production visual effects as well.

The color correction was solid. Desaturated with dark shadows serves the film’s theme very well. There was also times where the color palette changed with reds or blues to help convey the message of the sequence. The lighting could be pretty wild too, being sometimes extremely dark or bright.

There also seemed to be a lot of film grain. I don’t know if that was added in post-production or just because of the equipment they shot it with.

The dialogue and characters seem very natural and realistic. The interactions felt raw and real. The characters never felt static and glossy, they were rooted and had a level of grit and imperfection to them. The film as a whole had this quality.