Art cinema and New Hollywood: multiform narrative and sonic metalepsis in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Abstract

This paper will consider Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) as an example of a trend in contemporary cinema in which complex narrative forms traditionally associated with international art cinema have become common in productions targeted at mass audiences. The multiform narrative of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind will be analyzed and situated in its relationship to art cinema, where multiform narratives have often been used with an internal-subjective mode of narration to represent character thought and perception. The paper will also explore the innovative use of sound in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to navigate the numerous diegetic and ontological levels of its multiform narrative in a technique that I will call sonic metalepsis. I will argue that the use of sound bridges in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to efface what are normally rigid diegetic boundaries constitutes an example of the narrative trope metalepsis. Finally, the paper will briefly explore some of the explanations offered as to why multiform narratives, which have been a part of the art cinema tradition since the early decades of the twentieth century, have recently become commercially viable.