3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
There is nothing harder than getting over a lost love. Charlie Kauffmans science fiction, meta-romantic comedy, solves that with the invention of a machine that erases someone from your mind. It deals with the harsh reality of the painfulness of break up. Through the use of selective memory loss and the science fiction narrative, the film asks the question of whether or not it is better to have no memory of a person or to preserve the positive memories with the heart wrenching ones. It is also a positive film, despite the melancholic overtones. Jim Carreys character is both a heartbroken protagonist but shares an optimistic mind as he struggles to keep his memory. Kauffman writes a film about the importance of having love in ones life while creating a complicated story that makes us cry and laugh at the same time. The high concept is allowed to be used to create a poetic film about humanity with no ending that assure that everything will be happy. But, it does assure that in the end, it is always better to try than to not go through with it at all. With dense literary allusions and cerebral concepts, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of the most romantic movies of all time.