Experiencing grief changes a person. There are days that start normal, happy. Then you remember that someone is missing from your life and only lives on in memory. There is a pain that rips through you so suddenly, it stops your heart for a split second as you remember how to breathe. There are days where you wonder if having your memories completely erased would make things better. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind explores this concept in great detail.
Is it Better to Forget?
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind asks a basic philosophical question. Is human experience just a collection of our own memories or does our experience shape and define who we are whether we remember it or not? What happens if you erase a terrible memory? Would it completely alter who you are? Would you make different choices because that terrible memory is missing? Are our negative experiences just as important as our positive ones in shaping our concept of self?
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind explores these concepts. The movie itself is a part romantic comedy, part science fiction, part fantasy, and takes the viewer on a very strange, melancholic journey backward through time, using the lens of remembering and then losing the memories of a great yet turbulent relationship that ended sourly.
A Look Into the Story of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind...
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind follows Joel (Jim Carrey), a socially awkward man who trudges through the monotony of his very humdrum life. On what seems like a whim, he boards a train to Montauk for little reason beyond impulse. There he finds Clementine (Kate Winslet), a breezy and spontaneous girl, his complete opposite. An instant connection forms because well, as they say, opposites attract. We find out throughout the film, the couple had a whole relationship prior to this one and it ended. Joel learns that Clementine hired a company called Lacuna Inc. to wipe her memories of him. He decides to take the same course of action, out of spite.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind spends the bulk of its narrative on the counter-chronological story of Joel and Clementine’s tumultuous relationship, he comes to remember all the reasons he originally loved her. The story takes on the feeling of a man, running away, like a fugitive being hunted down, attempting to protect his memories of Clementine from the erasing technology as he simultaneously re-lives them and watches them vanish. As the film progresses, we end up deeper into his memories and the passionate early days of the first relationship with Clementine.
Thus, the viewer bears witness to both the birth and the death of their relationship through the lens of both the pain and happiness of remembering and then losing the memory. It is enormously powerful and moving.
Yet, these two people at a later point in life come back together. One of the core issues with Lacuna, Inc.’s technology is it only erases memory. It cannot touch the natural human impulses that led us to the situation in the first place. "This suggests that even if we forget a person in our memories, our desires and spirit would recognize them," says Brandon Halsted, a psychology writer at 1day2write and Britstudent.
This superficial aspect of Lacuna’s technology is illustrated within the replay of the characters Howard and Mary’s relationship memories. After their affair, for some reason Howard keeps her employed at the company. By keeping her close, the stage is set for the affair to repeat itself. This technology seems to doom people into repeating the past in a vicious cycle—never growing, or never moving forward—and trapping them in the absence of their memories, just like when you are grieving and get trapped in all the memories.
The Bittersweetness of Memories
Most people have a very heavy, sad recollection of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, yet there are triumphant and happy takeaways too. "It implies the importance of remembering the good with the bad, highlighting the need for using bad experiences to grow from and become a better person," says Jeffrey Smalley, a lifestyle blogger at Originwritings and Write My X.
Joel is willing to try again with Clementine, despite knowing that they did not work out the first time. He has tried to learn from what he saw in his memories after he views his records and listens to the tapes.
Sometimes it hurts to remember the people that I have lost. The memories sneak up on me, and I am transported to a different place, where they are still with me. Yet I would not erase them if given the choice. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind has made it clear, at least to me, the pain of remembering is also the joy of remembering too.
Get your copy of the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Blu-ray DVD by clicking here.
To read more about how our memory makes us unique, order The Forgetting Machine: Memory, Perception, and the Jennifer Aniston Neuron.