Erasing Memories
“Would I erase my painful memories of someone I loved just to move on with my life?” I found myself asking this question as I watched the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. Since the movie was written by Charlie Kaufman (who also wrote 2 other innovative films, “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation”), I expected to be blown away with a story that questions the very nature of truth and how we perceive the world. In the end, I wasn’t jolted with any great realizations about life. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the movie and related with it on a more emotional level as compared to his previous films.
“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is a nice, quiet film focused on real people and is a good break from all these noisy, empty Hollywood blockbusters. It begins simply enough when a guy named Joel gets out of bed one day feeling that a huge chunk of his life is missing. He decides to skip work altogether and take a random out-of-town trip. He doesn’t know what draws him to that place but he suddenly finds himself attracted to a strange lady with blue hair. The lady with blue hair, whose name is Clementine, takes a fancy to him too and pursues him on the train ride back. Later on in the film we find out the reason these 2 seemingly different people get along is that they already met a long time ago. It just so happened that they erased their memories of each other. Clementine did it out of impulsiveness, while Joel followed out of revenge.
As explained to Joel, his memories will be erased while he sleeps to remove the possibility of any potential trauma. In the middle of the process, Joel realizes he has made a very big mistake. He was too focused on the bad memories that he forgot he and Clementine shared so many good moments together. He panics and begins to hide her in the deepest darkest recesses of his brain going as far as his childhood. Seeing the interplay of his childhood and his adult memories is funny in a creepy kind of way.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the part when they were about to delete the memory of when they first met. In the original version, Joel just walked out on Clementine because he could not really understand her behavior at that time. He didn’t know her well enough to see that part of her nature is to shock people and to go against any norms. To provide a certain level of comfort for this great loss, the Clementine in Joel’s head and the real Joel, agreed to change the ending by saying a proper goodbye to each other. I felt that this scene captured in simple terms all the emotions we feel when we are about to lose something or someone, and yet are helpless to do anything about it.
80% of the film takes place inside Joel’s head. We go on a journey with him and question the nature of our memories. In this film, memory is treated as a mere object and not as an integral part of who we are. Therefore, it can be erased to suit our purposes. Many other significant events happen outside of Joel’s mind while the erasure process is going on. People make decisions that have far-reaching effects for the other characters. Everything and everyone is accounted for. More importantly, people get what is due them.
The entire cast deliver solid performances. Jim Carey is subdued in this film, which is a refreshing change from his roles of late where he tends to try too hard to get the laughs. Kate Winslet shows us the different shades of Clementine from the bright unconventional version to her dark insecure side. Elijah Wood makes me forget he played Frodo Baggins, which bodes well for the rest of his career. Mark Ruffalo, Kirstin Dunst and Tom Wilkinson are not onscreen much, but they all manage to reflect in their performances the changes their characters go through. However, the greatest strength of this movie is its ability to raise interesting questions in our heads: “Why do we torment ourselves by falling for people who are obviously wrong for us?”, “If we already knew a relationship is going to fail, would we even bother to try?”, “By erasing our memories, are we not denying ourselves the privilege of learning from our mistakes? Would we not condemn ourselves to a life where we do things over and over again?” You’ll be surprised to realize later on that you probably asked one or two of the same questions in your own lives. Safe to say, after watching this movie, you will come out of the theater not really changed, but hopefully a little wiser.
“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is a nice, quiet film focused on real people and is a good break from all these noisy, empty Hollywood blockbusters. It begins simply enough when a guy named Joel gets out of bed one day feeling that a huge chunk of his life is missing. He decides to skip work altogether and take a random out-of-town trip. He doesn’t know what draws him to that place but he suddenly finds himself attracted to a strange lady with blue hair. The lady with blue hair, whose name is Clementine, takes a fancy to him too and pursues him on the train ride back. Later on in the film we find out the reason these 2 seemingly different people get along is that they already met a long time ago. It just so happened that they erased their memories of each other. Clementine did it out of impulsiveness, while Joel followed out of revenge.
As explained to Joel, his memories will be erased while he sleeps to remove the possibility of any potential trauma. In the middle of the process, Joel realizes he has made a very big mistake. He was too focused on the bad memories that he forgot he and Clementine shared so many good moments together. He panics and begins to hide her in the deepest darkest recesses of his brain going as far as his childhood. Seeing the interplay of his childhood and his adult memories is funny in a creepy kind of way.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the part when they were about to delete the memory of when they first met. In the original version, Joel just walked out on Clementine because he could not really understand her behavior at that time. He didn’t know her well enough to see that part of her nature is to shock people and to go against any norms. To provide a certain level of comfort for this great loss, the Clementine in Joel’s head and the real Joel, agreed to change the ending by saying a proper goodbye to each other. I felt that this scene captured in simple terms all the emotions we feel when we are about to lose something or someone, and yet are helpless to do anything about it.
80% of the film takes place inside Joel’s head. We go on a journey with him and question the nature of our memories. In this film, memory is treated as a mere object and not as an integral part of who we are. Therefore, it can be erased to suit our purposes. Many other significant events happen outside of Joel’s mind while the erasure process is going on. People make decisions that have far-reaching effects for the other characters. Everything and everyone is accounted for. More importantly, people get what is due them.
The entire cast deliver solid performances. Jim Carey is subdued in this film, which is a refreshing change from his roles of late where he tends to try too hard to get the laughs. Kate Winslet shows us the different shades of Clementine from the bright unconventional version to her dark insecure side. Elijah Wood makes me forget he played Frodo Baggins, which bodes well for the rest of his career. Mark Ruffalo, Kirstin Dunst and Tom Wilkinson are not onscreen much, but they all manage to reflect in their performances the changes their characters go through. However, the greatest strength of this movie is its ability to raise interesting questions in our heads: “Why do we torment ourselves by falling for people who are obviously wrong for us?”, “If we already knew a relationship is going to fail, would we even bother to try?”, “By erasing our memories, are we not denying ourselves the privilege of learning from our mistakes? Would we not condemn ourselves to a life where we do things over and over again?” You’ll be surprised to realize later on that you probably asked one or two of the same questions in your own lives. Safe to say, after watching this movie, you will come out of the theater not really changed, but hopefully a little wiser.
posted by wilgefortis @ 3:16 PM
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