Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

　I don’t like romantic movies very much. First of all, because I have no experience in love myself, I can’t get emotionally involved with the characters, and I can’t watch the main character overcome barriers and become happy without a black sense of jealousy, just as I envy the happiness of others close to me. Secondly, I can’t deny that the reason why I like to watch movies and other forms of fiction is to escape from reality or to substitute for reality, but when it comes to romantic movies, even while watching them, I start to feel that I can’t fall in love in reality, so I am using this movie as a substitute for reality. And when you start to think that way, you can no longer feel that the movie is just a cheap porno to satisfy your desires. This is a reaction that only happens with romantic movies, so I guess I have a big complex about my lack of romantic experience. However, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is different from those romantic movies that make my heart ache. From the title of the film, I was afraid that it would be a sweet romantic film with a “we’re only together forever” vibe, but I needn’t have worried. However, I wouldn’t have seen this movie if the screenwriter wasn’t Charlie Kaufman, the director of “Let’s End It,” which I had seen before and liked. Anyway, I’m glad I got to see this movie.

Synopsis

　The main characters, Joel and Clementine, have a terrible falling out. Wanting to make things right with Clementine, Joel goes to the bookstore where she works, but she acts like a stranger to him and starts flirting with his new girlfriend. Joel is extremely angry and confused. He confides his problems to a friend, who tells him a shocking truth. She had undergone memory removal surgery to erase her memories of Joel. This makes him even angrier and sadder, and he decides to have the surgery himself to erase Clementine’s memory.

Spoilers below.

The Good

　The movie starts with Joel waking up in bed. He is angry that his car has been scratched without his knowledge, but heads to the station to go to work. At the station, he can’t help but feel a kinship with Joel, who in his mind poisons him about Valentine’s Day, which is today, a stupid day created by a greeting card company. As I was thinking about this, Joel impulsively jumped on the train in the opposite direction and decided to skip the office. While wandering aimlessly on the beach in Montauk, he met Clementine. Oddly enough, they are attracted to each other and become lovers. Watching their friendly date on the frozen lake, I found myself smiling at their relationship, and before I knew it, I was starting to envy them. Then, with the opening credits, the movie switched to Joel crying alone in the car. Hmm? What is it? A while had passed, and something had happened to them in that time? As he was thinking about this, he reached his apartment and swallowed some pills. It may have been a sleeping pill, but Joel immediately started to feel lightheaded. Then there were two men watching him from outside. They sneak into Joel’s room with what looks like some kind of equipment. At that time, Joel was already lying face down on the floor. What, what, is this a scary movie?
In the next cut, Joel is lying on the bed and seems to be having a blurry view of the conversation with the acquaintance he met before entering the room. And in the next cut, he is telling two of his friends what happened with Clementine. What is this all about? Is it just a sudden recollection? He tells them that he bought her a gift to make up for it and went to deliver it to the bookstore where she works. The camera moves to the bookstore. To my surprise, Clementine comes in and treats him like a complete stranger, and to top it off, she starts flirting with the new guy. Surprised, confused, sad, angry, and speechless, he leaves. As he walks down the aisle, the lights in the bookstore go out behind him, and the darkness of the bookstore, with all the lights off, turns into the darkness of the dimmed room at his friend’s house, and he walks seamlessly from the aisle of the bookstore to the living room of his friend’s house. What the hell is this staging? What does it mean? Unable to see his depression, his friend pulled out a letter. “Clementine K. has erased Joel B. from her memory. Don’t tell him.” Joel went to the sender of the letter, Lacuna Corporation, to find out the truth. The Lacuna Corporation existed in a slightly outdated building, about the size of a private hospital in the countryside. Dr. Mierzwiak, who seemed to be in charge of Lacuna, said, “She wasn’t happy. She wanted to move on,” she tells him. Out of anger and sadness, he too decided to erase her memory. He explained to Joel that he had created a memory guide about her using his memories, and that he would perform the procedure while he was sleeping in his bed at home to erase her memory, and when he woke up, she would be gone from his life, and he also asked Joel to explain about Clementine. Joel told him that he first met Clementine when he was forced to attend a party that a couple of friends had thrown on the beach. What? No, no, no. No, no, no, they met on the beach, but there was no party at that time, was there? What are you talking about? After being told that the memories would be erased from the closest ones, Joel was placed on a chair with a helmet for brain scanning, and the guided memory generation began. When Joel’s vision became blurry and he thought he could hear voices in the distance, he found himself on his bed wearing the helmet. The two of them were in his room operating the equipment. Then he found himself sitting in Lacuna Corporation with his helmet on, standing next to the doctor, staring at him. Now the situation was finally starting to sink in a little. He is now in his own memories. The scene in the opening credits where he was crying was right before he underwent the memory removal surgery at home. The two people who snuck into his room were employees of the Lacuna Corporation. The sudden movement from the bookstore to his friend’s house may have been a sign that the world was already in his memory. The film is presented in a disjointed timeline. I thought to myself, “This is like a movie that I need to concentrate on and not let my guard down. But for a film with science fiction elements, the introduction is nothing short of brilliant. The main character, who was supposed to be at the peak of happiness, is crying in the next cut. Two unidentified men break into the protagonist’s home after he passes out from taking pills. An abrupt change in the timeline. A sudden change in the timeline, a development that doesn’t add up. And scene changes like a visual trick. What is it? What is it? What’s going on? is the most important element in the first half of a science fiction movie. This may just be a reflection of my own proclivity for fiction, which is to be suddenly thrown into an absurd world created by the author. Anyway, we, the audience, were thrown into Kaufman’s world, a dazzling and mysterious world that unfolded in the form of the protagonist’s memories.
　As the doctor says, Joel’s memories are erased from the most recent ones. And as he erases his memories, he seems to be reliving them. First, he relives the memory of the treatment at Lacuna, so now he remembers the fight with Clementine. She comes home drunk late at night and tells him that she might have crashed her car and hurt him. Hmm? Car… scratch? Speaking of which…. Hmmm? He gets angry at her. Not only about the car, but he suspected her of having an affair. She gets angry about it and tries to leave the house. He chases after her, but he can’t catch up with her because she suddenly disappears, or when he thinks she has disappeared, she walks behind him and heads for the exit. The world in his memory does not operate according to normal physical laws. When she leaves the house, he chases after her in his car, which is parked after scraping a fire hydrant… This scrape is the one he was angry about finding in the morning at the beginning of the film. What is it? You mean the scene at the beginning is after their breakup? Did the mysterious meaning of the party on the beach mean that maybe they had two first encounters? I would later find out that the dim theory that arose in my mind was correct. Yes, after erasing each other’s memories, they met again on the beach in Montauk where they first met. In the same way that Joel and Clementine, whose memories had been erased by the clever transposition of the time line, thought that their meeting was their first encounter, we, the audience, did not think that their first encounter was their second encounter. Then, both of them and the audience can share the shock of knowing that the encounter at the seaside at the beginning of the film was actually a reunion between two former lovers who had broken up badly, although it may not be at the same time. In addition, there is foreshadowing everywhere, which becomes even more apparent as you watch the film two or three times. It’s fun to watch a movie while thinking about what this scene actually means, and then that scene… It’s like you are actively tasting the movie. The narrative structure of the film is so well written that it draws the audience into the world of the film by synchronizing the impact of the characters and the audience through the manipulation of the timeline, and by making the story unfold in a mysterious way that catches the audience’s interest.
　Joel goes back and relives his memories from the breakup to the encounter. In the scene where he remembers the breakup, he spits out to Clementine the words, “I’m going to erase your memory, just like you did to me. The further you go, the stronger their love becomes, and the more cheerful and joyful events you relive. He begins to think that he doesn’t want to forget Clementine after all. This diametrically opposed change of heart is easy to reconcile thanks to the reverse chronological order of events. He pulls away from her and tries to retain her memory by running away from the memories that are being erased. There are many visually interesting sequences, such as frantically running away from the various things that make up the memory scene as they disappear one after another, or when he thinks of his boyhood on a rainy day in order to hide her in other memories, rain starts to fall in the room where they are.
　Eventually, in the morning, her memories disappeared. Nevertheless, before she wakes up, she says, “I’ll see you in Montauk,” which seems to have had a subconscious effect on her, and they have a fateful reunion there. As they become lovers again, Mary, the assistant of Dr. Lacuna, who had left Lacuna for various reasons, sends them a record of the time when she underwent memory removal surgery. The two are upset when they hear a tape recording of them hating and cursing each other. They learn that their love for each other has already cooled down and they are on the path to breakup. Clementine is about to leave Joel, but he stops her. “I’m going to get bored and suffocated by you,” he replied to her when she told him that because of their past ending, he said, “Fine. They were convinced and chose to be together again, knowing that there was a possibility of another breakup. The end roll began with a whiteout of the image of the two of them running along the snow-covered beach of Montauk, joking with each other, repeated three times. This last scene seems to hint at a future where the two will eventually be separated again and again. I think it means that their future is left to us, the audience. Then I would like to believe that even if they end up breaking up, they will not choose to erase their memories this time. It’s not like their happy memories will lose their meaning when they part.

The Bad

　What, do I still have to write? Oh, the bad parts…. I thought I summed it up pretty well, but…
　I really liked this movie, so I can’t think of many bad points. The first is that it’s a bit complicated and not everyone can understand it immediately, but that’s the beauty of this movie. I’ve heard that there is a term in the world, “self-satisfied esoteric film,” but I would strongly say that this is not one of them. The reason why this movie is so difficult to understand is because of the shuffling of the timeline, but it doesn’t blur the depiction of the theme of love. Oh, except for the future of the two of them. Besides, the foreshadowing that the timeline is being messed with is well done. There are also hints that tell us the order of the timeline. If you don’t understand after watching it once, just watch it again. If you don’t do that and complain about it, that’s your choice, but I think it’s a bit lazy as a viewer’s attitude. Besides, it would be boring if all movies were easy to understand, wouldn’t it? Oh, this movie seems a little difficult to understand. Okay, I’m going to solve the mystery of this movie! Don’t you think it would be more fun to watch a movie that makes you think, “Okay, I’m going to solve the mystery of this movie! Oh, you don’t think so? I see… Then why don’t you just watch “Aoharide”?
　The second one is quite serious, and may not be acceptable to serious people at all. That is, when Joel was undergoing memory removal surgery in his bed at home, the employees of Lacuna took advantage of the fact that Joel was asleep and went to the extreme of brutality on the spot. They found a bottle of whiskey in Joel’s kitchen and drank it, and had sex with him on the couch. But I’m not that serious, and Joel changed his mind and said, “Can you hear me? I don’t have a problem with the scene where Joel has a change of heart and is desperately screaming in his memory world, “Can you stop now?” while his employees Stan and Mary are dancing in their underwear with music playing right next to him as he sleeps. It’s fiction, after all, so don’t be so uptight and just enjoy it.

Conclusion

　Is the end of the story the only thing that matters in love? If you break up, will the time up to that point be wasted? No, I don’t think so. So I’ll try to expand and abstract the concept of “love” to the level of “relationships”. For example, I have friends who have drifted apart. I have friends that I have drifted away from, not because we had a fight and parted ways, but simply because we went to different schools and never saw each other again. If I hadn’t participated in the reunion, I wouldn’t have seen them again. So the memories of running with them on the field after school, laughing with each other, have no value anymore? No, it can’t be. Just because we will never see each other again does not mean that the memories of those fun times will lose their luster, fade away, and lose all meaning. It’s the same even if you had a painful breakup. No matter how much you come to hate your partner, it doesn’t mean that the happiness you once felt is gone. Forgetting is not necessary to look forward. We can take a new step forward, keeping the memories of that time when we were overflowing with happiness in our hearts. I think that is the theme of this film.