Film Clip 1

I have chosen as my clip as scene from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Eternal Sunshine is sort of an exploration of the breakup between two people, Joel and Clementine, and what would happen if one were capable of erasing that other person from one's memory. The scene I have chosen actually takes place within Joel's dream during the erasing process.

This scene occurs just after Joel thinks of a way to stop the erasers from deleting Clementine from his memory. The idea is for Joel to hide Clementine in a memory that she does not belong in. The first shot begins on a stuffed skeleton (a reference to an earlier scene) and pans over the window showing the rain. Then there is a medium shot of Clementine, a quick shot of Clementine's underwear, and then a medium shot of Joel and Clementine from the opposite angle. This sequence is characterized by the a shaking camera. The effect is that the viewer feels like an observer rather than a participant in the events. Much of the camera work centers around this idea of observing from the outside.

Directly afterward, there is a quick shot of a boy stomping in a puddle and then cuts back to Joel and Clementine back on the couch. This shows that Joel is changing to another memory. The next shot is of the boy, presumably a young Joel, looking at his bike. The shot is mainly focused on the bike itself. Then there is a cut to that same bike back in the apartment where the scene began. The quickness of the shots, as opposed to a dissolve shot, provides a sort of overlapping transition between memories. It gives the viewer a chance to keep up while still showing a radical shift in scene.

Joel then runs under a table to get away from the rain, which is now inside his apartment. The table looks very similar to the overhang of young Joel's memory. There is yet another cut to young Joel watching the rain from under the overhang. This then comes back to adult Joel under the table and cuts quickly to baby Joel running under a kitchen table. This sequence connects us the the scene in a very indirect, yet eerily memory-like, fashion. The effect is that the view feels like he or she is remembering yet is still outside as an observer.