Returning to the premise of “we can’t be friends (wait for your love),” Ariana Grande has expanded on the concept that Eternal Sunshine was built on: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Except, in this universe, the stand-in for Lacuna Inc., Brighter Days Inc. (which bears a sunshine as its logo), has something new to offer its patients. As explained by the doctor (Allen Marsh) during the intro to the short film, co-directed by Christian Breslauer and Grande, “When we first started our journey, we had the sole mission of relieving people from painful memories that might be harming them and keeping them from moving on and living a joyous life. All these years later, we’re proud to say we not only continue to specialize in the erasure of painful memories, but also in the preservation of happier ones.”
Which means, as the doctor continues to explain, that people can revisit their happiest times whether they have dementia or even just for a serotonin boost. And yes, apart from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it also wields a premise similar to Lisa Joy’s underrated 2021 movie, Reminiscence. In said movie, people can access memories from certain parts of their lives by entering a water-filled tank (sensory deprivation-oriented and all that). A man named Nick (Hugh Jackman) makes his living off charging people for this service (much as Brighter Days Inc.) does, albeit in a much more dystopian context, explaining, “When the waters rose and war broke out, there wasn’t a lot to look forward to. So people began looking back. The tank started as an interrogation tool, and since then, nostalgia’s become a way of life.”
Grande (as a geriatric “Peaches”), being more optimistic than that, doesn’t opt for such a lens, though there is a Hugh Jackman connection in that she makes a very clear nod to X-Men when she’s wheeled out into the special room that can project all the memories she’s chosen to save. The only catch (since there always is one)? She can view them just once before they’re erased from her memory for good. Thus, as the memories, presented as marble-esque balls that drop into the “memory landing,” project onto the screen before an elderly Peaches, watching them feels especially bittersweet. Starting with “Memory One,” which is soundtracked to “intro (end of the world)” (not the extended version that appears on Eternal Sunshine Deluxe), a home movie of Grande’s/Peaches’ parents and grandparents during simpler times, back when Joan Grande and Ed Butera were still married (divorcing when Grande was eight years old).
After Memory One is “destroyed,” the next memory focuses on Grande’s/Peaches’ life as a pop singer. Commencing with an a capella version of “Eternal Sunshine” that uses Grande’s beloved looping machine (which Imogen Heap helped inspire), it then segues into a song from the deluxe version of the album, “Dandelion.” With a man playing the signature opening notes on his trumpet, soon after, screens showing different parts of a crowd in a packed arena emphasize the importance of this aspect of who she is. As elder Grande/Peaches looks on, she’s as riveted by herself as anyone else in the audience, doing a little “bop along” that’s, luckily, cuter than it is cringe.
It’s the next memory that serves as Grande’s/Peaches’ abstract reflection on a relationship gone wrong. Fittingly soundtracked to “twilight zone.” Which is why the context of the memory is so eerie, with Grande/Peaches waking up in a flooded/generally destroyed home (while outfitted in an old-timey sort of white ankle-length, button-front dress). In this memory, there are also a few callbacks to the “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” video, including the teddy bear and a framed picture of Grande/Peaches in her “Sixteen candles shot” with Evan Peters. From the bottom of the water, Grande/Peaches also pulls out a necklace of overt sentimental value, placing it around her neck before heading outside to see the rest of the apocalyptic damage (in scenes that resemble what Madonna already did in the video for 2015’s “Ghosttown”).
Rather than choosing another song from the deluxe edition of Eternal Sunshine (like, say, “Warm” or “Past Life”), Grande opts to go with “Supernatural” for the next segment. Which makes sense when the viewer sees her getting beamed up by a UFO (needless to say, the still from the deluxe edition of the album cover is taken from that moment). An image/concept that is very similar to what Taylor Swift did for “Down Bad” during The Eras Tour…all in service of the lyrics, “Did you really beam me up?/In a cloud of sparkling dust/Just to do experiments on/Tell me I was the chosen one/Show me that this world is bigger than us/Then sent me back where I came from.” Lord knows that’s been done to Grande more than a few times as well (though, to be honest, she’s also done it to her own fair share of men). The song choice also makes sense when considering that, despite wandering through the bombed out wreckage of it all (a symbol for her last shambolic relationship), Grande/Peaches is still hopeful/trusting enough to believe there’s still something better “out there.” And yeah, why wouldn’t one of the memories you’d want to preserve be your alien abduction?
With only one memory left, Grande/Peaches lets it rip, pressing the button to “unlock” the last one, saving the “best” (a.k.a. most heart-wrenching) for last. To emphasize that this memory means serious business, it’s the only one in black and white, going much further back in time to show us a lone man in a tavern. Next to him on the countertop of the bar is a bloody cloth with a beating heart beneath it. The man, played by none other than Grande’s real-life father, Ed, takes out his pocket watch to gaze at a picture of his daughter attached to it inside (like a locket). Glancing behind him, he can see a color memory of the moment he gave his little girl the same necklace we saw Grande/Peaches putting on in the last memory.
Leaving the tavern, Ed wanders through an alley as “Hampstead” begins to play. Managing to find a brain in a jar—thereby fully establishing the Frankenstein concept that’s about to go down—Ed returns to his laboratory, of sorts, where we see “Brighter Days Inc.” written on the window outside. In other words, Ed is the founder of the company that Peaches continues to enjoy today. Peaches being, per this last memory, a reanimated concoction made in the image of his daughter. A woman who, as a newspaper headline (in, what else, The Sunshine Spotlight) tells us, was “torn apart” by something or someone (though we aren’t told specifically what… Perhaps a werewolf? There are plenty of those in the London area.).
Although his experiment initially seems to be unsuccessful, he notices her pinkie starting to twitch and takes it as a cue to push a number of giant speakers close to her body and play the piano into them as the verse, “What’s wrong with a little bit of poison? Tell me/I would rather feel everything than nothing every time” begins to swell, pulling at our heartstrings as much as Peaches’, who, for whatever reason, doesn’t have the Frankenstein scars anymore in the present (perhaps another metaphor about time healing all wounds).
The two are then shown back in the tavern together, playing the piano in tandem while the newspaper with the now incriminating headline burns in the fireplace. In any case, as the daughter of the inventor of Brighter Days Inc., it feels like Peaches should be able to view her memories as many times as she wants without having a cap put on them—what kind of nepo baby status is that?
To round out the memory-centric motif of the twenty-six-minute, ten-second film, Grande concludes it with another clip from a home video. This one of herself as a little girl telling the camera, “You know, someone has said that we should live each day as if it were the last day of our life. ‘Ah! This is the last day, help me, help me! This is the last day, ah! I only have twenty-four hours left. Aaaaaahhh!” Even if it’s one of those cliché platitudes, they’re wise words, especially when zanily repackaged by a child version of Grande. The point being to remind everyone that life is too short to settle—whether that relates to a romantic situation or even a short film.
And while the praise being lavished on Grande for this short film is understandable, perhaps everyone has forgotten by now that Lana Del Rey did a lot more in the first minute of the Anthony Mandler-directed Tropico (during which she’s seen dressed as a Virgin Mary-type figure in the Garden of Eden with Jesus, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley). The collective memory—much like the individual’s memory—can be fickle like that.
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