Love and Heartache
An analysis of ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind’
There is an amazing page on Facebook called ‘The Cinemaholic’ run by a bunch of guys who claim to be cinephiles. It functions more like a blog, where the authors of the site regularly publish posts listing down some of the greatest movies ever made. Their topics also cover directors and movies the best in their genre. One such list which I happen to come across was the list of 50 best movies in the last 50 years.
As I made my way down the list (they are mostly in a descending manner) I hoped the movie at number one would be a movie which I have seen. To my dismay, it was a movie titled “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind”. I had heard a lot about this movie, but never seen it on TV. None of my friends had seen it either. This could only indicate one thing. It must be an art house movie starring two popular actors. I was apprehensive to watch it thinking it would bore me with its philosophical overtones. I decided to pass on.
Later, another list came out – this time from the BBC; a list of the 50 greatest movies of the 21st century. In this list, the movie was listed at number 4. I was amazed now. What could be so great about this movie that it commanded so much of respect? I began to think about it. The title doesn’t give out anything either. Without further ado, I decided to watch it.
The first time I saw the movie, I was lost. I found it confusing and couldn’t make out what was so great about it. However, I knew I had missed out on something. Therefore, I decided to watch it one more time. It was only in the second viewing that I realized how beautiful a movie it actually is.
Once I finished watching the movie, I sat in silence for quite some time. My mind was trying to process the awakening it felt within me. It was as if a spark had been lit and trying to burn my heart with pure thoughts and the complex emotion of love.
The above may have sound a bit exaggerating, but I swear every word of it, is true.
‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind’ came out in 2004. A film, directed by Michel Gondry, based on a screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, is a breathtaking piece of work. As the movie is an intricate labyrinth of emotions, I am writing in detail some of the key moments as the narrative flows.
The movie begins at a slow pace as you are slowly introduced to the shy character of Joel Barrish (played by Jim Carrey in a remarkable performance) on a dull Valentine’s Day. Impulsively, he decides to take a train to Montauk and skips work, where he reflects on how disillusioned he is with life. One can’t help, but feel there is a certain melancholy to him. We see him sketching; see him walking past a house (a very faint audio is heard in the background, don’t miss it) as he reminisces on a failed relationship with Naomi, his ex-girlfriend.
Joel is someone we all have been at a point in our lives. We, too, have gone through a particular patch in our lives, where everything makes no sense. We are so disillusioned with our lives that we start criticizing each and every thing.
Enter Clementine – a feisty, loudmouth, charismatic, talkative girl, who feels like a breath of fresh air. She is the exact opposite of Joel. She starts talking to the shy Joel in the train and explains about how she keeps changing her hair colour, depending on her mood at that particular time. Clementine is a perfect companion to Joel. We see them bond playfully as she invites him over for drinks. The attraction builds up. We see Joel taking the initial steps to cross the bridge towards Clementine.
At this moment, I was smiling. This is how I imagine conversations between two people, who are attracted to each other, begins. Sparks fly as Joel lets down his guard and is ready to embrace the magic of Clementine’s warmth. She takes him out on a date to the frozen river Charles, where they lay down on the frozen river looking at the night sky and observing the stars, creating an iconic image.
How often too, we wish to do the same thing! I have always wanted to lie down and admire the beauty of stars and to do that, with a person you like, has another magic altogether. It is these simple moments that we spend with someone special is what makes being in love even more amazing. We feel time fall away in the background. The world does not matter anymore. All that matters is that one person only.
This is where the movie flips the table on you and the plot of the movie actually begins. Such is the brilliance in the writing of the movie; I was stunned to learn 20 minutes in, the credits start rolling.
The next scene shows a crying Joel driving his car in the rain. We all are familiar with this emotion. Joel experiences heartbreak after his relationship breaks down with Clementine. He is shocked with grief and doesn’t know what else he can do. We can only imagine what he must be going through at that moment. His tears are genuine as he laments on his loss.
Enter Stan and Patrick, the two supporting characters played by Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood. As an audience, we have noticed Patrick before as he tries to ask a thoroughly confused Joel, after his date with Clementine. There is panic and confusion in his face at the time and he tries to assess why Joel is waiting for Clementine outside her house.
It is moments like these that the movie started to lose me for the first time. I tried to understand what he meant in the scene mentioned above. But do not lose hope because Kaufman’s screenplay is playing tricks with you. He wants to confuse the viewer and winks at them with the reintroduction of those guys. We see the guys placing complicated machinery around him as Joel lies unconscious on his bed.
There are scenes edited here, where we see Joel talking to his friends about his attempts to reconcile with Clementine, but is shocked to see her behave as if she has never met him. Joel is taken aback at this weird behavior from her. To add insult to injury, he sees her kissing a very young boy (notice that he fails to see the face of the guy being kissed). Joel is distraught and is anguished at this cold attitude from her. His friends share a knowing look, before his friend Rob decides to take matters into his own hands. Ignoring the screams of his wife, he hands Joel a small piece of paper.
This is where the brilliance of Kaufman’s script is once again displayed. He introduces a sci-fi angle into the story. We learn that Clementine has erased Joel from her memories from a clinic named Lacuna. Finding it hard to believe Joel investigates and upon learning that the procedure is actually possible, decides to get back at Clementine by agreeing to remove her from his memories as well.
The rest of the plot follows as we see Joel’s memories of Clementine being erased slowly, followed from his most recent to the very first moment when we met Clementine on the beach.
We learn the reason why Clementine decided to call off their relationship after a fight. We see how they bicker and fight with each other as Joel never takes Clementine seriously. She is hurt by his callous attitude towards her and gets mad at the fact he is not letting her close.
I was conflicted at this moment. I could empathize with Joel and at the same time, completely understand Clementine’s frustration. She was right in her part about Joel being distant and driving her crazy, while I was able to deduce why Joel behaved the way he was.
I wonder whether it is possible to be in a relationship, where the people involved have contrasting personalities. We often see and hear opposites attract and secretly wish for star crossed lovers to unite. What then caused the abrupt failure of their relationship? There is a deeper thought that arises when we reflect on relationship failures. If we really are heartbroken over a failed relationship, would we ever look back and think about the joyful times we spent together? Would we ever relate to those bygone moments, we once considered magical with a past lover? Would it bring back fond memories of our past lover? And if it does, has the essence of that old relationship ended in your heart?
These questions arise in Joel’s heart too as he sees a very candid moment with Clementine being erased slowly. He remembers how vulnerable Clementine was at that particular moment and recalls the passionate love he felt for her back then. He tries to lose himself in that memory, but realizes with the procedure underway, he can’t do anything about it. It is erased from his mind.
Realizing that what he and Clementine had was something pure and reflected a happy time in his life, he now resolves to retain Clementine back – at least, those memories of her, which reminded him of how surreal their love was. He starts fighting the procedure (with a little bit of help from his own imaginative manifestation of Clementine) as he tries to get rid of the procedure, by hiding Clementine deeper in his childhood memories. For some time, he manages to evade them, but eventually realizes every bit of Clementine will be erased
The film has two other subplots. One is about Stan and his secret affair with his colleague Mary, the receptionist of Lacuna. The other subplot follows Patrick as he tries to woo Clementine (whom he secretly kept in contact after operating on her) by impersonating Joel’s personality.
Both these sub-plots show how love is actually never lost from a person. This is apparent, when we Clementine feeling uneasy as she realizes she is missing Joel’s presence (due to Patrick trying to channel Joel’s personality by constantly repeating things Joel had told her earlier). We see Clementine panting to understand the hollowness she feels. She tries to be herself with Patrick, but she realizes that nothing makes any sense to her.
These feelings experienced by Clementine have been felt by every person going through a break-up. We all try to move on with the situation, taking stock of our broken hearts and wondering what went wrong. We try to analyze and contemplate various scenarios; how things would have turned out if you had done something different or had given more of your time to the relationship, rather than letting it slip through your fingers.
The second sub-plot, involving Mary, Stan and Dr. Mierzwiak has similar tones. It is revealed eventually to Mary that she too once was romantically involved with the doctor. Regretting her affair and the thought of destroying the doctor’s marriage, she decides to undergo the memory-erasing procedure herself.
Mary is the answer to the dilemma faced by Joel and Clementine in the movie. Just like the two characters are struggling with the effects/after-effects of the procedure, Mary too, in a way, unknowingly realizes that she never could get over the strong feelings of love she had for the doctor. She falls in love with him again, without realizing she volunteered to erase him in order to save his marriage, in the first place. Through her, Kaufman portrays the message that love is powerful and no power or technology of man could ever understand or help us deal with it. He also has Mary deliver the quote from which the movie’s title has been taken from:
How blameless is the vestal’s lot? The world forget, by the world forgot,
Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind, each prayer accepted, each wish resigned.
These moments are brilliantly edited along with Joel experiencing the final memory to be erased - his first memory of Clementine, when he had met her on the beach. This final memory is beautifully shot.
Joel narrates the day back to Clementine’s manifestation and tells her how he spotted her walking alone on the beach. She reminds him that this being the last memory, there is nowhere they can hide and once this is erased, he won’t remember her at all. Joel simply replies that he wants to enjoy this moment with her, even if it is for one last time.
At this moment, I thought – how I would feel if I knew my time with my loved ones was limited. When we realize, all the fights, the time lost due to ego, pettiness boils down to that one last moment, when we realize we won’t see that person ever again. What would our feelings be when we realize we would never getting a second chance to apologize for our mistakes or confess our true feelings? The world crumbles away and yet, we realize we want to be with the person standing next to us. Be with them till our last breath. The final goodbye is inevitable, but as Joel said, we should simply enjoy the moment.
We see Joel and Clementine play on the beach. We see them admiring the horizon as they walk on the shore. We see them enter a house and talk with each other about what happened in reality and why Joel ran away from there, leaving her in the house. He confesses regretting all the things he could have done to prevent Clementine from letting him go, he wishes how things had been different between them.
They meet on the stairs as the house gives way and Clementine bids him a final goodbye. He confesses his love to her by saying ‘I Love you’ one last time.
It is in this moment that Kaufman allows himself to bring an element of magic to the screenplay. As Joel leans forward to Clementine, she whispers in his ear, “Meet me in Montauk”.
Can love transcend reality? Probably yes, according to Kaufman. This is the whole point of the movie. The entire plot of the movie builds up to this particular moment.
All the other characters and their stories – be it the fake reality created by Patrick to woo Clementine, the alternate reality created by Dr. Mierzwiak to help Mary suppress her feelings for him, the fantasy reality created by Stan as he tries desperately to woo Mary and the imaginative reality created by Joel to retain Clementine – all imply this one important message about love.
Love is transcendental. It is a highly paradoxical emotion. It is not bound by any dimension and can resonate through the ages. No matter how hard we try, if we have ever experienced true love or gotten a sliver of it, we can never let it go. We can only pretend to exist above it by burying it deep within our subconscious, but it will always be there. Those experiences which we cherish – the first kiss, the first time we make love, the first heartache – we can never experience the joy and the sadness attached to it with anyone else. Just as Joel, Clementine and Mary, we can trick ourselves into forgetting about it, but in reality, it has never let go.
The procedure ends. The opening scene that we see is actually the first time they meet up after the procedure has been performed on them. I assumed the movie would end here, but it doesn’t. Instead Kaufman has taught of a way to bring reality in the movie by adding the final epilogue-type scene.
Mary, distraught at the realization of her past, writes a letter to all the patients of the clinic along with sending them their files and the tapes which they recorded before undergoing the procedure. Maybe she realizes that living with a blank mind, having no recollection of the past (spotless mind) is not correct and therefore, serves no purpose in achieving true happiness (Eternal sunshine). To this effect, she has sent Joel and Clementine their tapes as well.
We pick up right after they come back from their night date to the river, where they decide to head back to Joel’s place.
Clementine gathers her things and acknowledges the package and plays the tape in the car. They are stunned to hear Clementine say stuff about Joel and why she wants to break up with him.
Joel is furious and demands to know whether she is playing him. Clementine denies all this. Infuriated, Joel asks her to leave. Clementine, heartbroken once again, cries her way back and is accosted by Patrick, who foolishly tries to talk to her again. She yells at him and starts crying. She doesn’t understand.
Realizing that Joel was the answer to her hollowness, she heads back to his place. Upon entering the house, she sees a shocked Joel on the floor, listening to his own tape. He offers to turn it off, but she declines, considering Joel had to hear all the awful things she said about him.
This moment is pure excellence on the part of Kaufman. We see our two leads confronting the stark reality of their relationship. We see them standing in silence as the audio keeps playing around them, Joel’s sentiments about her echoing all around. We can make out Joel is equally ashamed. He tries to tell Clementine he doesn’t mean all that. To some extent, Clementine lets the words wash over her. When it becomes unbearable, she decides to leave.
Joel follows her out. He confronts her and asks her to stop. Clementine speaks for us in that moment, when she says that it is going to be the same thing again. She states that we both will develop the same feelings for each other and eventually, end up hating each other because that is how she is. She simply wants to have her own piece of happiness, even if it means Joel embracing all her eccentricities and flaws.
To this, Joel simply replies OK. They continue to stare at each other and eventually end up in laughing. To me, their laughter symbolizes their attempt to give their relationship a chance once again; that they are ready to move on and give each other a chance once again.
Kate Winslet acts so well in this movie; I felt her performance to be even better than her performance in the movie ‘The Reader’. Her performance was worthy of an Academy award, although she was nominated for one. Jim Carrey too delivers an iconic performance as the shy and reticent Joel; however, his brilliance is lost due to his perennial-funny man image created in everyone’s minds. He was not even nominated for an Oscar.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind is a movie for the ages. It has developed a cult following and rightly so. I am sure this movie will continue to enthrall future generations and teach a thing or two about love to everyone, when it is actually not preachy.
Do watch this movie and get ready to be spellbound for sure. Some movies do leave you breathless and this movie indeed left me while changing the way I understand the emotion of love.
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