Movie Review: Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind
Until today, it is still the best romantic drama movie I have ever watched. Written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry, this movie uses aspects of a soft psychological thriller, a touch of science fiction, and a nonaligned narrative to address the nature of memory and love. This movie reminds me of the book Hujan by Tere Liye — one of his best-written works. Both of them perfectly demonstrate how the intended loss of memory could impressively affect the love story a couple has built. We can create memories, but our memories will neither blur nor vanish.
The movie begins with Joel Barrish (Jim Carrey) decides to skip his work on a gloomy morning and take a train out to Montauk. During his quiet trip, he encounters blue-haired, extrovert Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), who apparently sits across him and is also on a lone trip to Montauk.
“Do I know you?” Clementine asks. She begins to bombard Joel with abundant topics that might make a stranger feels uneasy. Despite their contrasting personality — Joel is shy and Clementine is manic — they almost immediately connect and feeling drawn to each other. From Huckleberry Hound to the moment she sings, “Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine. You were lost and gone forever. Dreadful sorrow, Clementine”, they do not realize that they were once in a relationship for two years. They have the bizarre urge to travel to Montauk that day, where they unexpectedly first met at a beach house.
The complexity of this movie begins when after they had a fight throughout their past relationship, Clementine hired the Lacuna firm to erase all her memories about Joel and their relationship. Joel then decided to do so upon discovering this news about Clementine from his friends. The narrative subsequently takes place in Joel’s mind during the memory-erasing procedure. His body is unconscious and tied to the bed, but he undergoes the bittersweet, illusory memories of Clementine in reverse, starting from the downfall of their relationship. As the process reaches to their budding relationship where there was nothing but happiness, Joel attempts to save at least some memories of her by trying to wake and escape from the ongoing procedure, hiding his idealized memories of her into the memories not linked to her. He does not want to lose those memories after all. Regardless of his efforts, the Lacuna technicians succeed in erasing his memories. At the last remaining memories, Clementine whispers to Joel to meet her in Montauk. This is where their bizarre and sudden urge to travel to Montauk established, where they do not recognize each other but feel déjà vu the entire trip. They may not know each other well that day, but the erased memories cannot refrain them from taking a train home to New York together and cannot avoid the love from blooming over the next two nights. They discover the Falling In Love Part II, without knowing there was a Part I.
Reversed storytelling is pretty common in movies, but this beautifully crafted movie hits differently. It does not gradually uncover veiled facts but forgotten emotions of love. No unpredicted plot twists, but will eventually put your emotions into a roller coaster.
A separate co-story also occurs in this movie. It involves Lacuna’s employees, which leads to Joel and Clementine’s discovering of the fact that there was a Part I but erased by Lacuna at their requests. During the procedure, the Lacuna’s employee named Patrick uses Joel’s memories to seduce and date Clementine in the present. So casually cunning and cruel in the name of professionalism, I know. It is going furtherly knotty when on the other side, Mary, another employee, is dating another technician, Stan, but she has feelings for the married head of Lacuna, Dr. Howard Mierzwiak. As if she does not feel enough for already being a fling, she digs out information from Joel’s memories removal only to find out that she previously had an affair with Dr. Mierzwiak and agreed to erase those memories after his wife revealed it. So, practically, she is also enduring the Falling In Love Part II, without knowing there was a Part I.
This devastation makes her mad and quits her job, but with the stolen company’s records. She mails all of Lacuna’s past clients, including Joel and Clementine in the present, the tapes of them recounting their memories to be erased. The present Joel and Clementine receive the mail during their happy stage of Part II and are shocked. They are disturbed with their sour memories, and Clementine attempts to leave and cut the Part II earlier, thinking that the relationship might end the same way it did in Part I. As they tame their ego and slowly accept the reality, they decide to go on with it, believing that by accidentally falling in love again, they are meant to be together.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind satisfactorily provokes an odd and intense undefined emotional response. It captures how we, as humans, often want to free ourselves from painful memories. Those are memories where we can no longer forgive, and it drives us nowhere but into a dead-end, with a horrifying phantom chasing after us. No matter how many times we want to erase and how tough the efforts, they are still there.
The process where Joel tries to save the memories of Clementine during the procedure is also intriguing. It engages with Joel’s childhood memories, and he struggles to find a place for the mini-Clementine to hide in his house, as an ordinary kid playing hide and seek. All of the scenes in this movie lend us a documentary and dreamy feels — the scenes are dimly illuminated and cloudily filmed. It adds an aesthetic instrument to the flawlessly delivered plots. Being an utterly excellent movie, I have watched it twice and do not mind at all to make it thrice. Its soundtrack album is a masterpiece composed by my favorite musician Jon Brion, and I even added it to my Spotify playlist. All songs are calming, and you will feel loved by listening to them.
If you have not watched it, try to give it a shot.
If you fall in love with the movie, I will come up with the next review of another most beautiful romance movie I have ever watched: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — which may share the same vibes with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Have a nice day!
