Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Review

        It’s the season of love once again. Usually around this time I select specific films to talk about a grand idea. Ranging from a breakup, a nobody finally experiencing romance and two different historical events in the face of love. This time around, I’ve decided where I’m going to pick two films at random. For one, it’s got to be a film where I haven’t seen but has been talked about heavily in some film circles. Another one is a comedy since I have some things to say about it. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is probably one of the best films of the 2000s that I’ve watched. 

1. Joel and Clementine

        For awhile in the 2000s, you have some comedic actors that tried to steer away from the type casted roles and try something different. One example is Adam Sandler appearing in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love among others where he has stepped into the dramatic role. With Jim Carrey, he was everywhere in the 90s. He made a name for himself in his comedic roles like Dumb and Dumber and The Mask. While one can say that he has done something serious like The Truman Show but it’s ostensibly a comedic movie. 

        To say Eternal Sunshine is different from his prior films is really stating it. This movie is frontloaded with the concept of love where it does it in a unique way. So with that, we follow Joel, who’s a bit of an introvert where he randomly meets a quirky girl named Clementine. They manage to hit it off but time has passed where both can’t stand each other. Joel sees that Clementine has gone through a procedure to have her memories wiped. He follows suit as he wants to wipe out any memory he has of her. 

        As far as a love story is concerned, this one is very different. For one thing, the film has a very nonlinear approach with how we see the couple. Not to say that it’s confusing to follow since it’s not a traditional story told from one point to another, but one where we see how they meet and where the ensuing action takes place that kicks off the film. What I like is that it’s very grounded even though it has touches of sci-fi that’s imbued in the film. Like the fact that the whole world is normal but just the idea of having a company that specializes in erasing memory is nuts. 

        The chemistry that Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet have is very believable. For one thing, Joel is very neurotic that keeps to himself while Clementine is very outgoing is one of those people who wants to do things out of spontaneity. And it gets to a point where we see in one of the memories that Joel gets upset with her being reckless. It’s essential for a story like this to feature the turbulent moments because even though they’re going through a huge deleting process we want them to still try to be together. 

        Aside from seeing Joel try to stop his procedure from continuing, we also follow the workers of the company that has created this new idea. Both Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood do a good job portraying the workers Stan and Patrick respectively. It even gets messed up where it’s revealed that as Stan is working on Joel’s mind, Patrick has been seeing Clementine. To the point where Patrick has been using the items that Joel had gifted as his own “gifts”. I’m going to elaborate more on that specific world building and overall the difference between the idea of love and romance. 

2. Erasing Memories

        When I first saw the trailer, it was a clear red herring that advertised it as a comedic one where Jim Carrey unintentionally decided to wipe away his memory of his girlfriend. Now, there’s probably a comedic way of doing it. With how the film is presented it is practically terrifying when you really get down to it. Why would anyone want to have their one bad moment in life to be gone? It’s a human idea where we want to forget a bad relationship or a moment to be wiped clean, but it’s an unorthodox way to frame a love story. 

        For one thing, for as much that we follow both Joel and Clementine, we never get the actual reason why everything went south. We see the emotional core of it and it inevitably kicked off the event in the film to happen. Only Joel to realize that he has feelings for Clementine in spite of everything that he went through, even though we only saw a tiny glimpse of their relationship. This is where love and romance is the dividing line when it comes to framing a story about a couple breaking up and attempting to patch it up.

        And I should probably explain the difference between a love and romance story. For anyone, the terms seem interchangeable since they somewhat mean the same thing. We fall in love with anyone that we like, and we show romance when anyone is out with their significant other. In movie terms and it’s really from theater when you get down to it but it’s neither here or there. The difference between the two is that with romance it involves two people who fall in love and inevitably get together after going through some external rifts. 

        With love, they usually don’t involve a happy ending since a breakup is something that has to be done. Usually in the name of love since after all else fails to fix a relationship, one party tries to make it right. There are some films that deal with this idea such as Marriage Story and Blue Valentine to name a few, but the gist is that their presentation is sort of a downer since there’s no happy ending and the couple is left in a worse shape than when we saw them. So how does this relate to Eternal Sunshine?

        Since with this film, even though Joel follows suit to have his memory erased like Clementine, he still has feelings for her and tries to subvert the process by still retaining any last remnants he has of her. I really like how the clean slate is shown as we see Joel’s mind be erased like everything disappears or a face is wiped away. We even see memories of Joel’s past that he tries to have Clementine implanted so that he doesn’t lose her. There’s a moment of regret since he tries to tell her how he really feels about her but the process inevitably goes through. To say that the film is a downer is not really the best way to describe it. With what the film is going for and is very nonlinear where I can imagine Christopher Nolan doing a romantic/love story if he really wanted to, has it where there’s at least a good ending after everything that is shown. 

3. Overall 

        Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of the best films of the 2000s and one of the best love stories that should be seen.