My Life at the Movies 5.05.09: 2004 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Posted by DC Perry on 05.05.2009

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep”

2004 was a year full of sequels (Spider-Man 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Shrek 2, Ocean's Twelve, Meet the Fockers, The Bourne Supremacy), terrific comedies (Anchorman, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Dodgeball, Napoleon Dynamite), and history's most popular snuff film (The Passion of the Christ). It also gave us gems like Shaun of the Dead and the criminally underrated Saved! But the best movie of the year took a science fiction taffy pull and twisted and tugged on a boy-meets-girl story until it became heartbreaking and uplifting all at once.



2004 at a Glance

US President: George W. Bush
Median annual salary: $46,275
Gallon of gas: $1.81
Dozen eggs: $1.40
New house: $219,600
New car: $25,750
Movie ticket: $7.50
Boston Red Sox: 98-64, second place, American League East.
Me:



Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) wakes up on Valentine's Day and feels strangely compelled to blow off work and hop a train to Montauk Beach. He wanders the beach and writes in his journal (which has pages missing for reasons he cannot recall). He meets a blue-haired woman named Clementine (Kate Winslet), and the two hit it off right away. Clementine is as impulsive as Joel is not, and he's drawn to her unpredictability. She encourages him to take risks and he feels truly happy with her in ways he can't explain. As he waits in the car one day for her to get some overnight things from her apartment, a young man (Elijah Wood) knocks on Joel's window and asks why he's there, and if he can help him with anything.

Squiggly wavy lines.

Joel is frustrated by the problems he and Clementine are having. With Valentine's Day coming up, he wants to get the issues resolved. When he goes to see her at work to talk, she seems to have no idea who he is, and she kisses a man named Patrick (Elijah "The Young Man from Earlier" Wood) who visits her at her desk. When Joel complains of his behavior to his friends Carrie (Jane Adams) and Rob (David Cross), Rob shows Joel a card from a company called Lacuna, Inc. announcing that Clementine had a procedure to erase her memories of Joel. Furious and hurt, Joel storms into Lacuna's office and demands to have the procedure done on himself so he won't have to endure the pain of remembering the relationship, since Clementine does not. Doctor Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) instructs Joel to collect anything that reminds him of Clementine. These will be used to map his brain for memories to erase, and it will also get those items out of his house so they don't confuse him after the procedure is complete.


I stole a pair of her panties as well.

That night, two techs from Lacuna, Stan (Mark Ruffalo) and the increasingly-suspicious Patrick, arrive at Joel's apartment to perform the memory erasure as he sleeps. Stan's girlfriend and Lacuna secretary Mary (Kirsten Dunst) arrives to drink, smoke weed, and romp on Joel's unconscious body with Stan. Patrick calls his new girlfriend (careful viewers will be totally skeezed out now), mostly to show off to Stan that he has one, but she's not doing well, so Patrick bails to be with her. He's been using Joel's surrendered items to create a relationship with Clementine, and the artificiality of it all is driving her insane. Moments of joy she shared with Joel are hollow and false when Patrick recreates them.


Nothing makes any sense.

Inside Joel's head, the memory erasure is off and running. His memories of Clementine replay in his head as they are erased, and it's clear the relationship was a mess at the end. She's acting out. He's withdrawn. She's destructive. He's surly. She's trying to make him jealous. He isn't. These memories vanish as planned, but through some glitch in the control program, Joel begins to remember his visit to Lacuna, and he figures out that he's in the middle of the erasure. As older memories of Clementine roll back, he finds himself reliving moments of honest affection, and he tries to call off the procedure. Of course, he's unconscious on his bed, so he has no way to communicate this to anyone who might be able to do anything about it. So the memories keep coming and keep vanishing, and he is helpless to stop Clementine from being obliterated from his mind.


I could die right now, Clem. I'm just... happy. I've never felt that before. I'm just exactly where I want to be.

Since Lacuna's procedure is designed to remove only memories connected to his relationship with Clementine, Joel and memory-Clementine decide to try hiding her in memories Lacuna won't target. They look for shelter in Joel's childhood memories, in his deepest, most shameful memories – ones he hopes won't be found by the erasure procedure. Ironically, Joel gives memory-Clementine the one thing the real Clementine was never able to get from him – intimacy.


It was so intimate. It was like we were already lovers.

Early the next morning, Stan checks his equipment to find that Joel has moved completely off the memory map they made during his consultation. He panics and calls Doctor Mierzwiak at home, who agrees to come help find Joel. He successfully tracks him several times, much to Mary's admiration. She throws herself at him just as his wife arrives. Mary tries to explain herself, but Mrs. Mierzwiak reveals that Mary has done this before, but her memory of it was erased.


You can have him, sweetie. You did.

In Joel's last few moments before Clementine is completely erased, he relives their first meeting at a beach party. She tried to get him to spend the night in a vacant beach house with her, but he panicked and ran away, a part of their relationship he always regretted. Just as the house crumbles around them, Clementine whispers to him, "Meet me in Montauk."

Squiggly wavy lines.

Mary quits her job at Lacuna and returns everyone's items, including their recorded interviews detailing their reasons for undergoing the procedure. Clementine opens her letter and plays her tape in Joel's car. Joel throws her out of the car, convinced this is some kind of cruel joke. Patrick naturally swoops in, but is rebuffed. When Clementine reaches Joel's apartment, he is listening to his tape. They are both confused and apologetic, and Clementine is ready to end things, since they will (did?) end so badly. Joel stops her in the hallway, and despite the painful evidence of impending disaster, they decide to give their relationship another try.


I can't see anything that I don't like about you.
But you will! But you will. You know, you will think of things. And I'll get bored with you and feel trapped because that's what happens with me.
Okay.
Okay.

Inside all the painful revelations, all the twists and turns and personal destruction, there's a core of hope. That's not something Charlie Kaufman likes to give us, but it's what separates Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind from some of his equally brilliant but ultimately less satisfying work. We aren't spoon fed truisms or expected to accept that love conquers all; instead, we're given some dirt to rub on the wounds and an exhortation to walk it off. Life happens moment by moment, and plenty of those moments suck. We are the sum of our experiences, and as we peel back the layers of crap that we wish we could forget, we find that it's all interwoven with the things we couldn't live without. Joel and Clementine will probably have the exact same angry, hurtful, destructive relationship all over again, and it will probably end in tears. It already has, possibly several times. For all we know, they've looped through this cycle multiple times. But every single time, there's a chance it will be everything they dream it will be. And it's worth the risk every time.