Movies With Rain: "Eternal Sunshine" has a Top-Five Most Emotional Rain Scene
Jon Brion’s soundtrack to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is at peak nostalgia power with “Row”.
What made you feel like nothing mattered except that one moment, captured, and it plays back in your mind in a closed loop, private viewing only?
Now imagine that imprinted moment, enhanced by a Jon Brion soundtrack.
That’s the rain scene in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
If you went to high school between, say, 2004 and 2009 and considered yourself someone who drank fine indie art/music/movies with your pinkie out, you saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You may have watched it high after you smoked a sloppily rolled joint in your dad’s camper, or maybe it played in the background while you made out with someone who would later snip the tendons of your heart.
Let’s throw down some context:
Joel (Jim Carrey) has come out of a bitter relationship and undergoes a memory erasure procedure to get rid of his ex-girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet). As the procedure begins and he lays unconscious, he realizes he doesn’t want to lose those memories, and he tries to hide Clementine in hard-to-access pockets of memory throughout his brain.
She suggests he take her to a childhood memory. The scene evolves into one of the most gorgeous 50-second segments and one of the top all-time representations of rain in movies.
That clip still gives me chills, and sinks me into a puddle of memory. I’d even go so far as to say that if I were capable of human emotion, it might tinge my soul with a coat of grey sadness paint.
The song is “Row” by Jon Brion.
Certain movies are so on point that you feel the sensation that it’s too close to reality, and you may take your television and throw it in a bonfire after watching. La La Land. 500 Days of Summer. Eternal Sunshine. The Land Before Time IV: Journey Through the Mists. Okay, maybe scratch the last one. And yes, those links all lead to the saddest scenes of the movie. I’m sadistic like that.
The running theme is nostalgia for a lost love that didn’t end for any specific, clear cut reason. You moved on with a sense of emptiness. It simply didn’t work out.
Inside those relationships, however, there were moments worth keeping, memories you fought to preserve. Yeah, I’m biased. This movie came out during a pivotal time of my youth. I related to the sense of bitter nostalgia, and the broken relationship with no sense of why. I took myself back to being that child in the rain.
Jon Brion builds a world of beauty, sublime, nuanced beauty with his score for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Multiple moments are defined by a soundtrack that makes you feel like you’d like to lay down in memory and use the melancholy piano as a warm blanket. “Bookstore” and “Peer Pressure” and “Phone Call” – three other songs in Eternal Sunshine heavy with memory, like wet, quiet snow clumped on a pine branch.
It’s almost unfair, the type of atmospheric power rain carries. Watch Shawshank Redemption – Andy Dufresne falls out that drainage pipe and lifts his jubilant arms to the sky. Do you think if there’s a bright, chipper sun shining down on his escape, it holds nearly the same weight?
I read an article where the author started off by saying rain in movies is a pathetic cliche, then followed by praising his ten favorite rain in movies scenes, like it was so regrettable that he was forced to watch a bunch of scenes that are more beautiful than scenes in any other kind of weather.
Rain is rejuvenating, and rain can be painful.
I have gorgeous memories of being caught in a downpour, and memories like finding out a best friend died as the rain trickled off my tin cabin roof (yeah, I’m getting personal – get over it!).
Eternal Sunshine, thanks to its soundtrack, captures the bittersweet beauty of the duality of rain in one 50-second moment. The viewer is encapsulated in a submerged bubble of time and memory. Carefree youth and knowing you can never go back are melded. Joel tries to relive that exuberance, but he knows he can’t stay.
“Row” by Jon Brion takes you to that place, a drenched memory. You know you can’t stay there, but it’s okay to stand still with your mouth open, just for a minute, just long enough to remember the taste.
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Artist Links:
Jon Brion website (unofficial)
Jon Brion Soundcloud
Music by Jon Brion to get you bothered:
His production work on Mac Miller’s Circles
Phone Call (from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
The entire Lady Bird soundtrack (it will haunt your future children’s dreams)