movie review_ eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

The film Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind released in 2004 was Directed by Michael gondry and was written by Charles Kaufman. The film itself follows the strange couple who have their memories of each other erased, they meet at Montauk train station and strike up a relationship neither in them knowing that their mind to memories of them have been released in the first place.

Joel who is described as a bit of a sensitive loner can be seen as the calmer collected character out of the pair as in his house before meeting this girl we see it to be very organized and has quite a simple lifestyle, been quite withdrawing at first but after meeting Clementine received quite a different change in Joel as he becomes more outgoing trying new things doing fun things. There is a point in the movie where his organized personality got a little bit out of hand which leads to Clementine erasing her memories of him.

Clementine is the outgoing and impulsive woman that we meet at the start of the movie the complete polar opposite to Joel, she’s always doing things just because she’s always got a more colorful look compared to Joel which he was a lot blander in choice of clothing and luck. Her personality had let her to be a little bit overcautious of who she’s with due to past traumas that she had, which when she had arguments with her partners including Joel, it led to larger outbursts which caused a rebound effect of regret later for her.

So a little bit later in the film just after Clementine meeting Joel timeline jumps making it think to be like a few weeks later when in actual fact it jumps way before the meeting we see at the start of the film, it has Joel waking up in the normal day going a present for Clementine and everything and then going to visit her work in order to give said present but when he went to give her the present firstly she did not recognize him at all but also to the surprise of the audience who were watching the film she’s already moved on to another person which then raises hundreds and hundreds of questions. After speaking with friends it turns out Clementine had her memories professionally erased by a company known as lacuna which is owned by Dr. Howard mierzwiak, which after being able to see him personally we find out that Clementine ended their relationship on the turbulent note. Knowing this information after a bit of distress Joel proceeds to do the same thing as Clementine and is seen to her again erased from his mind, after doing the necessary process to get rid of Clementine from his mind he takes a pill which puts him into a deep sleep which then the employees at the lacuna come in to do the process.

After the employees come to do the work the movie then jumps back and forth through Joel’s memories about Clementine which then become quite a bit psychedelic as we see through the machine erasing his memories leaving a form of black expanse or destruction. Through this nonlinear jumping through his many memories of Clementine we see him trying to save at least the very deep memories of love and happy times of her.

Even went further back in time as the memories were being erased they resort to a direct drastic method on how to try and evade them they went into memories that were not necessarily on the chopping block like Joel’s past when he was a very young child or when he was just a child, they tidied to memories that were not relative to Clementine so that she will not be fully erased it was only by digging into past memories of Jol that they were able to stay safe but that also revealed a lot more into Joel’s background as well as Clementine. As this was taking place one of the other employees who took advantage of Clementine’s amnesia of Joel with all the memorabilia that he gave over to the company using it to win over this girl but do in doing so Clementine started to have rough patches where she remembered roughly of something is not in full clarity but in small hence.

After the events with the machine now both Joel and Clementine has no memory which then leads back to the start of the movie where these two met up and then continues even further after Clementine breaks up with the man who was trying to get with her but also when she gets into the car she takes with her a package with a tape containing a message that told the pair of them both Clementine and Joel that their memories of X amount of years have been completely wiped from their memories this leads to both characters in a form of distress as memories of their past are completely gone even though it just feels like they just met.


The ending for this film is left open as both parties are unsure of what they want to do now that they heard it all but it was hinted that they were considering and trying again. In my opinion the use of non-linear format for the storytelling in “eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind” was both creative and interesting as it allowed us to look into past events that led up to the initial memory wiping for the pair which made for a good narrative for this movie.