The Visual Storytelling of Brighter Days Ahead

The accompanying short film to Ariana Grande’s seventh studio album, Eternal Sunshine (deluxe), Brighter Days Ahead follows the same story from Grande’s hit song and music video “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love)”. This album era is in direct reference to the 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, incorporating themes of memories, heartbreak, letting go, and the complexities of relationships. With each song in its order, it tells a beautiful and vulnerable story told through both the lyrics and the visuals. The end of the “We Can’t Be Friends” music video leaves off on main character Peaches receiving a life-altering surgery that erases the painful memories of her past love, allowing her to let go and move on. “Peaches” is a play on the character Clementine from the inspired movie, portrayed by Grande herself.

The film opens around 40 years later at the same clinic, aptly named “Brighter Days Ahead,” with an informational video from the company explaining their goals with the services they provide, which is to relieve people of the painful memories that keep them from living a joyous life and preserve the happier ones. We see Peaches as an elderly woman getting ready for an appointment where she relives her happiest four memories. 

Her first memory starts in unison with the playing of “Intro (End of the World)” where cam-corder style footage of Grande as a little girl with her mother, father, and maternal grandparents. 

We then move on to the second memory, where we see Peaches as a young woman using her looping station, a tool used to loop and record music, performing the title track “Eternal Sunshine” and “Dandelion.” The pop star in real life began her musical journey as a teenager using a looper to record songs. 

Her third memory (filmed on the 747-landing set of Universal Studios, Hollywood) starts with the song “Twilight Zone,” where Peaches makes her way out of a decrepit house overflowing with water and fire, looking back on various trinkets of her past, possibly symbolizing getting out of a chaotic and broken relationship. She makes her way out to the streets of her neighborhood, immediately catalyzing the beginning of Supernatural, where she looks around at all the fire and catastrophe caused, representing looking back, reflecting, and ruminating on different aspects of her relationship. The final scene of the third memory ends with Peaches miraculously being ascended to the sky by a bright beam of light, where she looks straight up, not looking back down at Earth again, depicting the transformative nature of moving on and healing. 

The fourth and final memory plays alongside the final track, “Hampstead,” showing Peaches’ father, played by Grande’s actual dad, putting his daughter back together, Frankenstein-style, after she was torn to pieces from the assumed alien invasion accident from the third memory. When she's brought back to life, she and her father play piano and sing the final verse of the song together while a newspaper clipping describing the incident burns in a fireplace. This could symbolize Grande losing herself amidst her breakup and finding herself again with the loving kindness of family. The lyrics of “Hampstead” delve into how the media can misconstrue the end of a relationship according to a false reality. The burning of the newspaper represents living your life regardless of what the media and other people think, moving on from one stage of life to the next with a renewed sense of self, and a reminder of what’s truly important at heart. Grande has also reportedly stated that when she was growing up, she didn’t get to see her father often because her parents were divorced and he lived far away, so memory four is a sweet tribute to her love for her father and how important he is to her. With that, we return to Peaches as an old woman, where the Brighter Days system marks her last saved memories as deleted as she closes her eyes, looking satisfied and content, and the room goes dark.