Eternal Sunshine: love, memory and the art of forgetting

On 29^th July, a large group of us met to discuss Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), presented by Melissa, and described as a ‘sci-fi rom-com’.

Melissa had loved the film when it came out, and chose it not only to see whether the group shared her fondness for it, but to check how well it had withstood the test of time – 22 years. The film was generally well reviewed when it came out, with the New York Times later choosing it as the seventh best film of first quarter of the 21st century. So, it seemed promising.

Melissa’s fondness for the film stemmed from several reasons.

First, she liked the subject matter, e.g., relationships, memory, and technological change including its promises and perils. She also liked that the film kept her attention from beginning to end, engaging her mind and making her smile throughout, and often  laugh out loud. Also, the more she watched it (twice in the previous week), the more she liked it. Although the subject matter is not uniformly happy, the film is full of little details that made her smile.

The plot, like most rom-coms, is generally this: boy meets girl, boy and girl break up, boy and girl get back together again. In this case, however, the approach is far from linear, or simple. In fact, we begin toward the end, as Joel, the boy, heads to work on a train. At the last minute, he decides to take a train in the opposite direction - to a beach called Montauk. Here he meets Clementine. As they get to know each other, they joke about her name and the song that goes, ‘Oh, my darlin’, oh my darlin’, oh my darlin’ Clementine, you are lost and gone for ever, dreadful sorry, Clementine’ – a hint that Clementine will be lost and Joel will be sorry.

Soon the plot is jumping around and it’s hard to know where you are in the story. We learn, however, that Joel and Clementine fall in love. We see more signs of trouble ahead though. For instance, as they lie on the frozen Charles River, to which Clementine has dragged Joel, and where he declares he has never been happier, we see a huge crack in the ice. Indeed, our protagonists seem perhaps mismatched. Joel is reserved and a bit depressive, while Clementine is outgoing and impulsive, and may be over-reliant on alcohol. Eventually the things that once endeared them to one another annoy them. With Valentine’s Day approaching, Clementine stomps out.

Joel goes to find her in the bookshop where she works but she doesn’t seem to recognize him. He then discovers that she has used a company called Lacuna that has found a way to erase the memories of an unhappy relationship. In retaliation, he decides to do the same. During the procedure, though, he changes his mind and tries to keep his memories of the two of them together. This part of the film becomes disorientating, as we flash back to Joel and Clementine’s times together, both happy and not, and as Joel attempts to hide himself and Clementine in previous memories which they had not shared, including his childhood traumas. Along the way, we see that the Lacuna team are ethically challenged, not only because they are partying in Joel’s flat while ‘supervising’ the memory erasure procedure. They are also overly casual in their treatment of clients, they use their knowledge of the removed memories to manipulate people, and they themselves mislead those with whom they have relationships. When the doctor’s wife unexpectedly appears, it is revealed that he and the receptionist have had an affair, which she has had erased.

We eventually realise (or not!) that the start of the film was in fact near the end. Joel and Clementine meet on the beach once again, having mentioned meeting in Montauk during Joel’s memory removal. When they re-meet in Montauk, however, they do not recognize each other as people they have known before. Through a series of plot devices they discover what has happened and seem to decide to try again. The film ends with a song that had been played during the opening credits as well and is now repeated at the end, called and beginning  “Everybody’s got to learn sometime”.  Melissa’s interpretation was that Joel and Clementine will try again, having learned from their unhappy experiences. With any luck, they will also continue to learn from past mistakes, instead of wanting to erase them.

The stars of the film are Kate Winslet as Clementine and Jim Carrey as Joel. The clinic staff include Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo and Tom Wilkinson. Melissa found the acting to be uniformly excellent, and also particularly liked the score, by Jon Brion, the screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, and the cinematography by Ellen Kraus.

It would be fair to say that the group had very mixed reactions to Eternal Sunshine, and we agreed it was one of these ’Marmite’ movies, which you either love or hate.  Several people found the whole thing just thoroughly confusing, or ‘too clever by half’, with some of the group bailing out before the end. Others loved the movie, both in 2004 and now, and were enthralled by Kate Winslet’s acting (and many changes of hair colour, perhaps designed to indicate time changes).   One person began to understand the film only at the point where Joel started fighting the erasure process, as represented by the house at the beach crumbling to dust.

The two main characters were thought by some to be frankly irritating and unappealing to the viewers, so their attraction to each other was another puzzle.  A kinder viewpoint was that they were both ‘lost souls’ trying to find their identity, but in the process destroying relationships around them. It was also felt by quite a few of the group that for a ‘rom-com’, the film wasn’t actually very funny.  In addition, the plot might have worked better if we had actually seen Joel’s previous girlfriend, Naomi, who is referred to, but who apparently ended up on the cutting room floor.  The doctor/receptionist affair was seen as contrived, though a necessary plot device to get the clients’  tapes exposed.

Many agreed that this was not a ‘one-time’ watch, though we were not all prepared to invest the time in a second viewing. 

This led to a fascinating discussion about the nature of memory, the wish/need to erase ‘bad stuff’ from the past, and whether, given a second chance with the same partner, one would still be attracted to them, and/or would have learnt from past mistakes, and therefore do it differently next time. We reflected on people, including  Richard Burton, who had remarried the same person, with mixed success.   Memories can’t all be positive, and the mixture of good and bad experiences contribute to a person’s development and personality. And why did the film include a woman who wanted to erase memories of her deceased dog, presumably a uniformly happy time?

Another possibility was that Joel had dreamt the whole thing, which led to a discussion of other films of distorted memory/reality, such as Bladerunner, The Matrix, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and Christopher Nolan’s Memento.  The idea of erasure goes all the way back to Dante’s Divine Comedy, in which drinking from the River Lethe erases all memory of past sins.  We ended by reflecting on the title from Alexander Pope (‘Pope Alexander’ in the film), which refers to a nun who has erased the world from her memory.

We all agreed that whatever our views of this film, the group discussion is always interesting and rewarding. 

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, 12 August, when Susie will present A Taste of Things, an ‘earthy and simple’ film set in 19th century France, and starring Juliette Binoche.