“If I could erase one movie from my memory and watch it again for the first time, I’d choose Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — to feel its bittersweet ache and surprising hope like a brand new heartbreak.”

If I could erase one movie from my memory and watch it again for the first time, it would be Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Every frame feels engineered to unravel the heart: Joel and Clementine’s messy, aching love; the surreal procedure rooms that feel like dental offices for memories; those sudden, impossible jumps through wintery Montauk.

The film is a tender, freaky dream about forgetting and remembering, and its emotional payoff—when the lovers choose each other despite knowing the pain—is devastatingly hopeful. To see Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey open like rare, fragile flowers again, without foreknowledge of the tricks and symbolism, would be a joyous, gut-punching rebirth of wonder