Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) - Michel Gondry

I think the classic or critically acclaimed films that I haven’t seen fall into two categories. There are the ones that I basically know everything about, like Fight Club and The Godfather. Then there are the ones that I have heard of, that I know are important because they’ve won Oscars or do very well critically, but I have no image in my mind of what they actually are. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind falls somewhere closer to the latter. I knew Jim Carrey was in it, and that it wasn’t actually a comedy like his other movies, and that was about it. That’s definitely a nice way to watch IMDb Top 250 #80.

The film opens on Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) spontaneously skipping work and jumping on the Long Island Rail Road to Montauk, New York. It’s somewhere in the middle of winter, and the train is empty except for a blue haired girl, to whom Joel immediately finds himself attracted. Kate Winslet (Titanic, Contagion) plays this “colorful” character, Clementine, a girl that has more life in her pinky than Joel’s entire body. She exudes feeling, she is the free-spirited mythical creature that Joel has waited his whole life to meet. And then things go wrong.

The two go through an entire roller coaster of a relationship, finally ending it when they decide they can’t possibly be compatible as lovers and friends. Clementine’s erratic moods and sense of life are a burden for the static Joel, just as his boring stability weighs down her free spirit, so they end it. But then when Joel eventually sees Clementine again at a bookstore, he finds out something strange. She has no memory of him. Her forgetfulness is so genuine that it comes off as startling to the viewer at first. Joel, distraught by this discovery, goes to all of his friends, and they claim not to know who she is.

Joel eventually finds out from his friend that Clementine underwent an experimental treatment to have Joel completely erased from her memory. A man named Dr. Mierzwiak started this treatment as a way of erasing people’s memories of specific events or past lovers, hoping to create a happier past for us to look back on. Joel mulls over this new situation, and then goes to doctor saying that he wants the treatment for himself. That is, after he storms the office and demands to learn about the treatment and why Clemetine got it. Kirsten Dunst (Jumanji, Spiderman), plays the doctor’s receptionist, while Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers, 13 Going on 30), and Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings) play the doctor’s assistants. They were all great in it.

The next chapter of the movie focuses on Joel undergoing the treatment, which takes one night of Mark Ruffalo’s character systematically going through Joel’s brain (using some bizarre looking brainwashing machines) and erasing any memories he has of Clementine. As the film jumps from outside Joel’s mind to inside it, we see Joel reliving experiences from his relationship. The story leaves the real world and becomes a confusing mess of Joel going in and out of memories, as if the film wishes the show us how scattered memories of the past are intertwined in a web of emotions and people. But as Joel relives both the happy and painful memories, he realizes that he actually wants to remember his experience with Clementine, even if it means he can’t be with her. So the memory version of Clementine and the present version of Joel try desperately to hang on to each other in a very complicated scene that is both thrilling and emotional.

I’m not going to give away the ending, because it’s just too moving and I’m going to say right now that I loved it. While the movie has it’s slow and exhausting points, the story wrapped so beautifully that I wanted to run out and tell everyone that this magical movie existed. Kirsten’s character becomes pivotal, as she struggles with the classic cliché, to love and have lost or to never have loved at all (don’t worry they don’t actually say this in the film). Joel and Clementine go in and out of understanding the importance of keeping memories of all of your experiences, both the good and the bad.

But the two of them are so fun to watch on screen together and I was amazed that Jim could handle himself in such a dramatic role. As someone who takes this film’s messages very seriously, I was a wreck by the end. I couldn’t handle these characters who found love, lost it, and were looking to figure out whether it mattered if they kept those memories or not. The film gets it’s title from the Alexander Pope poem, which the film quotes:

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign’d;

I couldn’t even. Watch it for yourself.