When the film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” debuted, critics were almost entirely unanimous in their respect for the film. But while many experts agree on the film's overall quality, they tend to disagree on the film's most impressive features. Some, like Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer, applauded the film for the iconoclastic style of its screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, and its director, Michel Gondry: “['Eternal Sunshine'] feels like something entirely new; such are the gifts of Kaufman and Gondry, inventors and magicians. Wilonsky was very impressed by elements of the film that were inherently artistic cinematography. Others, however, found this play to be a brilliant adaptation of the classic Hollywood tale. Glenn Whipp of the Los Angeles Daily News was very captivated by the story and its thematic elements as presented in the article, calling the film "a surprisingly moving look at love, life and memory that gives us one of the great love films.” stories never told. »Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get an Original EssayThe disagreement among film critics over the proper classification of “Eternal Sunshine” is no riddle. The apparent schizophrenic nature of the film exhibits characteristics of both European art cinema, as defined by David Bordwell in his article "Art Cinema as a Mode of Cinematic Practice", as well as classic Hollywood narrative. Gondry and Kaufman interweave some of the most intrinsic characteristics of the two styles – ambiguity and closure, emphasis of character and the presence of a goal, and deviance and conformity from classic Hollywood – to create a complex combination of the two schools of cinema. The resulting hybrid results in a play that is both fresh and quietly familiar to audiences and critics alike. The first two concepts merged by Gondry and Kaufman are ambiguity, a key characteristic of art cinema (according to Bordwell), and closure, a fundamental aspect. of the classic Hollywood story. In “Eternal Sunshine,” there is a risk of confusion due to the persistent blurring throughout much of the film. Viewers accustomed to the classic Hollywood narrative style, characterized by linear causal relationships, find themselves confronted with puzzles as scenes and entire sections of the story are placed non-chronologically within the film. Bordwell states that “when it comes to art cinema, the puzzle is one of plot: who is telling this story? How is this story told? Why is this story told this way? » The film's opening scenes serve as its conclusion; however, the viewer is not aware of this until the end. It is at this point that, true to classic Hollywood form, there is a strong sense of closure as the details of the subplot and main plot are resolved. Bordwell's definition of art cinema includes "an open and arbitrary ending," but that is hardly what we encounter at the conclusion of "Eternal Sunshine." Mary (Kirsten Dunst) learns of her memory wipe following her relationship with Dr. Howard (Tom Wilkinson) and attempts to minimize the harm to others by sending files to other patients. After the story's central characters, Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet), learn their own procedures, they rediscover their love for each other and decide to restart their relationship. Although the viewer may be somewhat lost at different.