The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I thought that this movie was fascinating because of the story line. I thought that the plot was very different from any of the previous films we have viewed. The film was about finding love, losing love and rediscovering it a second time. It starts with two characters that meet and fall in love, then separate because of a malicious fight. Clementine decides she wants to erase her memories of Joel because of the past events. Joel later finds out what she has done so he similarly agrees to get the same procedure done to his brain. While the procedure was taking place he finds his memories to be very important and irreplaceable. He tries to stop the procedure throughout the movie, but can’t find a direct way to stop it. He tries to save his memories of Clementine by evoking different memories and hiding his memories of his relationship with Clementine among other ones. However, this process fails and all of his memories of Clementine are eventually erased from his memory. By the time the movie ends the audience finds out that Joel and Clementine have re-met and fallen in love again. This movie makes a couple points about love and romance. It seems to suggest that love is inevitable and that people are destined to find their soul mates. It reminded me of an old poem, “if you love something set it free, if it comes back to you, it was meant to be”. It felt like Joel and Clementine were intended to be together because of how they complemented each other. It was not a coincidence that they met and fell in love with each other twice. It was also interesting to compare Joel and Clementine’s relationship to Clementine and Patrick’s relationship. Patrick fell in love with Clementine during her procedure and eventually took all of Joel’s mementos of Clementine. He used them to try and make Clementine fall in love with him, but even the same things weren’t enough for her to fully love him like she loved Joel. We even see this same theme with Mary and Dr. Howard Mierzwiak who had previously fallen in love with one another, but since Dr. Howard Mierzwiak was married they too decided to erase all of Mary’s memories. Again after the procedure, she fell back in love with him, which shows that true love is unstoppable. Overall I thought that the movie was excellent because of its sequence. The order in which the movie was created made it very entertaining and kept me watching until the end. I enjoyed seeing Joel’s memories of Clementine, but in reverse order. Watching his memories in reverse order added a twist that I thought really worked to capture the viewer’s attention.