Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at 20

The classic shot from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
  Clementine and Joel lying on the frozen Charles River gazing at the stars and each other.

When you research Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind online, you will discovery that there is no shortage of videos and posts by people who claim it is their favorite movie of all time.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 92% favorable rating among over 250 movie critic reviews.  More than 250,000 viewers give it a 94% rating.  Over on the IMDB site, more than 1.1 million viewers give it an average rating of 8.3 out of 10, with the movie currently ranked 95th on the Top 250 films list.

So, it is a well-liked film, to say the least.  I would place it somewhere in the lower part of my personal Top 25 films list.  I was excited to revisit this masterpiece after going awhile without seeing it.  This viewing of the film (actually repeat viewings) did not disappoint and it allowed me to consider some of its various strengths and aspects in a new light.

When Joel and Clem first meet (chronologically) she is featuring green hair, a sign of spring and growth.  This is shown near the end of the film.

There are many reasons why Eternal Sunshine is so popular and endearing.  We can start with the acting.  Jim Carey gives what I consider to be the best performance of his career, precisely because he is not “Jim Carey-like” here.  Instead of being outlandish and silly (even stupid), his performance as Joel Barish is introverted, lacking confidence and emotionally awkward.

Meanwhile, Kate Winslet plays the outlandish, impulsive and zany character in the film, Clementine Kruczynski.  The two form a wonderful yin-yang relationship and we follow that relationship through the various stages of attraction, intimacy, routine, conflict and demise.  

There's nothing new or surprising about the film's basic story arc.  It can be found in any standard romantic comedy.  But Eternal Sunshine turns this trope into something special in two ways.  First of all, there is the tone of the narrative, which is easily familiar and accessible to everyone who has been through any meaningful relationship and break-up.  It features clever, adorable, intimate mundane moments from the relationship that show how love ebbs and flows within simple everyday instances.  The film is plainly romantic and relatable in this way but with a distinctive style all its own.

The second, more obvious, distinction is the non-linear way the story is told.  A special emotional experience is created in seeing events unfold and minor details revealed within the jumbled-up mind of Joel.  The film begins with its ending and it ends with its beginning, though not completely as all parts of the story are arranged out of sequence.  In between, we are treated to various scenes from the relationship, generally proceeding backwards, containing an emotive tone and content that captures the hearts of most viewers.

A lot of this is due to the Oscar-winning screenplay by the brilliant Charlie Kaufman who crafts a terrific balance between ordinary life, the value of memories, the nature of human attraction with a modicum of science fiction thrown in.  The latter is a memory erasing technique by a company called Lacuna that allows anyone to forget anything.  In this case, after the slow demise of her relationship with Joel, Clementine decides to have him erased from her life – something many former lovers wish they could do, which makes the sci-fi quality more embracing than strange.  

Much of the film's power comes from its excellent supporting cast.  Among them, Kirsten Dunst as Mary, Tom Wilkenson as Dr. Mierzwaik, Mark Ruffalo as Stan and Elijah Wood as Patrick all create an ensemble that brings vitality and authenticity to the film's experience while also enabling a needed subplot that adequately compliments the basic romantic narrative.

The soundtrack is also a perfect ingredient in this great mix of film elements.  It is both quirky and emotional, as is demanded by the film.  It reflects aspects of the relationship, the disorienting experience of memory erasure, and the treasured store of intimate memory itself.  It allows the film to effectively both tug at your heart strings without being sentimental and yet surprise you and make you smile at the offbeat aspects of the procedure and the relationship.

Finally, director Michel Gondry handles all of this masterfully.  This film hangs precariously on the edge of not being funny, of being confusing, and of being overly sentimental, even cliché.  As I said, the story itself is boy meets girl, they fall in love, but gradually their incompatibilities result in a break-up.  Nothing new there.  But, thanks to Kaufman's script and Gondry's guidance, freshness and uniqueness is breathed into the tale and it ends up taking you on an emotional trip you are not expecting.

Some of these emotions have to do with the relationship itself, but, on a deeper level, they are even more so invested in the exploration of memory and instinctual attraction.  Most of the film takes place inside Joel's brain as his memories of Clem are erased one-by-one.  The procedure begins with the break-up itself and all the things that contributed to it.  These are memories he can easily let go of.  But when Joel begins to experience the erasure of his more treasured memories he decides he wants to call it off.

The trouble is that he is unconscious while Stan and Patrick are busy tracking the memories pre-mapped in the brain and zapping them.  The plot thickens when we learn that Patrick actually fell in love with Clem while they were doing her procedure.  Moreover, Mary comes over to be with Stan in what turns out to be a pot and alcohol induced love fest while the erasure is on “autopilot.”  

Patrick leaves to check on Clem who is having a freak out.  She is confused and feels like she is “disappearing” and “nothing makes any sense.”  The reason for this is that Patrick is (highly unethically) using some of the material (journal entries, presents, drawings, sentiments, mementos) that Joel exchanged with Clem (which were used to map Clem's memories) as a way to romance her since he his rather inept at that sort of thing himself.  He is reintroducing parts of memories from the Joel-Clem relationship to build a relationship with Clem.  But Patrick doesn't really know what he is doing.  He calls Clem “Tangerine,” which is the nickname Joel gave her when she first dyed her hair orange.  But Clem's hair color is blue at this point so the nickname does not fit, compounding her unconscious confusion.

One of the most poignant moments in the film involves Clem and Patrick laying on the frozen Charles River staring at the night sky.  This is originally shown to us near the beginning when Clem and Joel did it together.  But what the audience does not receive at that point is what Joel ends up saying to Clem during this experience as they lie together on the ice.  It is later, halfway through the film as his memory of it is being erased, that we hear Joel tell Clem that “I'm just happy.  I've never felt that before. I'm just exactly where I want to be.”  But the memory is taken from him and it is at this point Joel decides he does not, in fact, want to erase Clementine.  

Later, we hear the same words mimicked from Patrick, who has stolen them probably from Joel's journal entry of them after the fact (which was ripped out and given to the eraser guys for mapping purposes).  Upon hearing these words, Clem immediately jolts up and says “I want to go home.”  The restatement of this erased memory only adds to her confusion.  To know that Joel felt such intimate contentment in this simple moment, which is rather out of character for him, makes the elimination of this particular memory heart-wrenching to watch.  But it is also sinister.

Joel decides, mid-procedure, that he no longer wants to forget Clem and sets out to hide his memories of her elsewhere in his brain.  The procedure goes awry at this point.  The remaining memories are moving around in his brain as he desperately tries to hide them. They are no longer where they were originally mapped.  Stan is forced to call in Dr. Mierzwaik to hunt down where they have gone and continue the deletion process.  This creates a kind of chase inside Joel's brain as Joel attempts to hide his Clem memories in places she would not otherwise be, like in his childhood before he knew her and even in an act of humiliation when his mother catches him masturbating as a teenager.  Mierzwaik keeps winning the chase though.  

Then we have the "red hair" phase.  The passionate "summer" time of the relationship, only here we see it in Joel's memory.  This conversation is about to be erased and forgotten.  Note that the books on the shelves are already fading to white.

Joel's failed attempt to hide Clem in his childhood gives us what is perhaps the film's most poignant moment.  Joel sings “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and remembers what it was like to splash in rain puddles and catch raindrops off the roof with his tongue as a child.  Then, suddenly, Joel is four years old and Clem is in a kitchen from the 1970's.  This initially works but Mierzwaik tracks down the memory and deletes it.  As he does so, Joel starts to convulse, requiring Mierzwaik to further sedate him.  The next memory is successfully deleted and the procedure continues.  Next, Joel tries to hide Clem in his teenage humiliation, when his mother walks in on him masturbating.  Again, he goes off the map but Mierzwaik tracks him down.  The childhood scenes continue to be touching and affective as the doctor tracks his memories down.

It is at this point in the film that another rather surprising revelation is made.  Mary is drawn to Dr. Mierzwaik and, in her stoned state, impulsively kisses him while Stan goes out for a breath of air.  She confesses that she has always been attracted to the older man.  All this only to discover that, in fact, the two of them did have a previous relationship and it has been erased from her brain per her request.  This brings up an interesting philosophical point that lies at the heart of the film.  

Memories can be erased but the basic attraction between people cannot.  Mary had the procedure but is still attracted to the Dr. Mierzwaik.  Clem had the procedure but is thrown off by Patrick's out of context use of Joel's memorabilia.  Joel is having the procedure and yet is ultimately given a new memory by his memory Clem which was never mapped.  This is a more profound moment than it might seem upon just one viewing of the film.  But I'll come back to this.

The "autumn" orange (which Joel calls "Tangerine") phase of the relationship is when things start to fall apart.  The couple are together but the passion is fading into dissatisfaction.

One of the debates among fans of the film is whether or not Joel and Clem might have had the procedure before and not remember it, like Mary with Mierzwaik.  On this claim, the couple are perpetually falling in and out of love in between complete erasures.  The film suggest this in a couple of ways.  At one point, as Joel is attempting to convince Clem to reboot their relationship he says to her (in his mind) “It'll be different if we could just give it another go round.”  One wonders how many “go rounds” have happened.

Then there is the last shot in the film with the two of them running down the wintry beach, laughing and tossing snow/sand at each other.  The scene is edited such that it repeats three times before the credits run to the accompaniment of Beck's “Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime.”  This suggests to many viewers that this exact moment has been repeated without either one of them realizing it.  This is an interesting and plausible possibility, but I don't buy it.
 
My primary reason is found in a very small detail - the condition of Joel's sketchbook/notebook.  At the beginning of the film, Joel impulsively decides to skip work and go to the beach in February.  He starts to journal and realizes to his surprise that “this appears to be my first entry in two years.”  The initial pages of the journal are clearly there, but the pages in between have been ripped out (given to Lacuna for mapping purposes though he has no memory of this, of course).  

If he and Clem were going through some sort of recurring erasure/re-coupling then the notebook would not in a more confused condition than merely missing two years worth of material.  The ripped out pages are the residue of a single relationship (unless, of course, the relationship only lasted a year).  But we are not given an anchor of time for the relationship in the film (unless Clem's four changes of hair color represents one year, see below) so this remains intentionally ambiguous.

As I have said, what makes the film so enjoyable is not the basic, quirky love story but its exploration of human memory.  When Joel meets Clem at the beginning of the film (which is actually after the erasure), Clementine asks Joel not to make fun of her name.  “I don't know any jokes about your name,” is his reply.  When she sings “Oh, My Darling Clementine” from the old Huckleberry Hound cartoon, Joel just absently shakes his head.

However, when they first met chronologically, which is near the end of the film, Clem asks the same favor of Joel.  No jokes about her name.  Joel immediately starts singing the song in jest.  He also mentions that he had a Huckleberry Hound doll as a kid and it was one of his most treasured things.  So, when the memory of meeting Clem was zapped, for some reason, his entire remembrance of his favorite childhood toy and cartoon character was based upon is erased as well?!

Why would this be?  Perhaps it is because Joel actually invested his childhood memory into that particular moment, sort of transferring it in time (in his brain).  It became intertwined with his immediate attraction to her and when that memory dissolved the associated childhood remembrance went with it.  This is, of course, rather tragic and it is a detail easily missed the first time you see the film.

Clem's blue hair represents winter.  The relationship died.  Only to be reborn.  This is near the beginning of the film.  It is the first time they met since they erased each other.  So, actually, this is their second beginning only that does not become clear until later in the film.

An odd but more magical moment happens near the end of the film when Joel's memory of Clem, being shifted around in his mind to avoid being erased, is impacted by Clem herself (as a spontaneous new memory).  Clem leans into Joel and whispers, “meet me in Montauk.”  The magic here is that Clem never really says this.  It is Joel's memory of Clem itself that tells him this.  

Moreover, it is a memory shared by Clem after her own erasure.  Which leads to both of them meeting each other (as strangers) on the wintry beach at the beginning of the film.  This is a shared memory of which neither of them is conscious.  As an unconscious, unmapped memory it is missed by Lacuna.  Their attraction for one another remains unaffected by the procedure just as Mary's erasure left her attraction to Dr. Mierzwaik unaffected. This is a lot of parse out.

For one thing, how could Clem be aware of this if it is a spontaneous memory given in Joel's subconscious brain?  Clem never actually says this so she would have no memory of it.  And yet, there she is, on the beach in February as Joel impulsively skips work that day.  This is the pristine magic of the film.  Joel obviously has the subconscious “memory” of Clem telling him to meet her that never actually happened.  He is obviously motivated by this but why is Clementine there?  She somehow knows to be on the beach at Montauk.  How does this even work?  

This is a fun little puzzle and there probably is no right answer.  My theory is it has to do with their basic, natural attraction to one another.  In his brain, Joel hears Clem tell him to meet her because he knows Clem intimately enough to subconsciously “know” that she will be there.  Their mutual, emotional attraction itself brings them together beyond all reason or comprehension.  So, the power of human attraction transcends reason and memory and brings them together.  That is not far-fetched.  People in relationships have genuinely intimate “coincidences” happen all the time.  That has been my experience anyway.

The other thing that is at work here is that Joel, on the verge of forgetting Clem altogether as she has forgotten him, has learned to consciously let go of her.  This allows the relationship to continue to work without either of them realizing it.  Near the end of the film, before she whispers “Meet me in Montauk” Clem tells him that “This is it Joel.”  To which Joel simply replies “I know.”  When she asks “What do we do?” he says with ironic resignation “Enjoy it.”

The film cuts to a montage of them together on the beach sort of roaming with the surf.  Joel has learned to live in and enjoy the present moment, even as it is a fading memory most which only happens in his head.  But, oddly enough, Joel is suddenly at peace with simply being there with her as the memory fades.  Except it does not completely dissolve.  His acceptance frees his natural attraction to act upon him (actually to act upon both of them) subconsciously.  

Clem has come to the beach apparently to clear her mind of the confusion she felt out on the frozen Charles with Patrick.  Joel has come there out of an uncharacteristic impulse driven by a memory he created deep in his brain, where neither he nor Lacuna could ever find it.  They end up together again.  Perhaps this has happened countless times before.  Perhaps it has happened only once.  It doesn't really matter.  In the end, the film isn't about memory or forgetting so much as it is about second chances born out of spontaneous mutual attraction.  And that is magical indeed.

Joel and Clem know the score.  The terrible truths of their procedure are at last, harshly, revealed to them, without either of them remembering any of it.  They don't know what to do but they both know they still feel this magical attraction.  This time it is Clem who starts to walk away but Joel pleads with her to “just wait.”  He doesn't understand why he says this.

“I'm not a concept Joel, I'm just a fu#ked up girl looking for her own piece of mind.  I'm not perfect.”

“I can't see anything that I don't like about you.  Right now, I can't.” (“But you will.  But you will.” is uttered by Clem simultaneously with this line.)

“You will think of things.  And I'll get bored with you and feel trapped because that's what happens with me.”

Joel's resignation to the present moment comes shining through.  “Okay.”

That's all it takes.  Just accept the attraction and prepare yourself to weather the inevitable problems ahead.  Clem parrots “Okay.”  They both nervously laugh.  Cut to them running in the snow on the beach.  Repeatedly.  The end.

Despite the nonlinear telling, you can still track the passage of time in their relationship by Clem's hair color.  These also are the colors of the seasons.  Green for spring and exciting discoveries (her hair is green the first time they meet), red for summer and passion, orange (tangerine) for fall and troublesome changes with the relationship, blue for winter and the icy end of it all.  So many relationships experience this precise arc.  

On the beach her hair is “blue ruin” (blue marks not only the demise of the relationship but its renewal as well).  She just broke up with Joel and replaced him with Patrick (who is wooing her with Joel-stuff) and she is in the winter of her discontent.  Joel doesn't remember her at all.  He is wondering why he doesn't move back in with his previous girlfriend.  He came to Montauk out of nowhere.  The two have the beach to themselves as it is cold and snowy.  Out of this icy encounter they are confronted with the fullness of what each of them has done (see here and here).  Everything is so disorienting.  They really like being with each other.  WTF?     

So it makes Joel's pleading for Clem to “just wait” all the more unsentimentally poignant.  She knows there's going to be trouble.  To which they both strangely laugh as each other is saying “okay.”  Its a magical moment to end this magical script backed by solid performances, terrific music, and expert directorship.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of my all-time favorite films.  It feels as fresh today as it was in 2004 (despite the use of dot-matrix printers and clunky computers, this is pre-iPhone) because it speaks of memory and attraction in a unique way that shows us all something we otherwise might not notice at all.

 

Note: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind premiered 20 years ago today.

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A wonderful nine-minute section of the heart of the film is here. 

The best analysis of the film I found online is here. 

Another excellent analysis is here. 

A much more in-depth analysis is here. 

An interesting summary of what the film is about is here. 

Another very good analysis of the themes of the film is here.