The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Would you want to forget a person if they leave you?
Did anyone else binge The Take or Watch Mojo videos on YouTube from time to time? Unfortunately, I will be the first to admit that I spent many hours watching videos ranking and analyzing movies and character archetypes and what they say about our expectations that we have in our lives or how they affect our perspectives.
Within those videos Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind comes up quite frequently as a romantic comedy that breaks the mold, I didn’t know why the movie fell into this category, but it had always been on my list of movies to watch for a long time.
My mom was a frequent watcher of Rom-coms and through her introduction I have watched so many of them. 50 first dates, 10 things I hate about you, 4 Weddings and a Funeral, Pretty Woman, Notting Hill, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. So! Many! Gems! If you haven’t seen these, and you need a retreat out of reality, these are great!
But because of this, movies that try to subvert the pattern of what a romantic comedy feels like piques my interest when they try to dig deeper than “they fall in love, the end” model. How did they get there really? What happens when it ends? What happens when families get involved?
There is a time and a place for rom-coms and I love them, but it’s also equally interesting to subvert the traditional formula. So without further ado, let’s look at Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Summary:
This movie centers around Clementine and Joel, a tumultuous relationship that comes to an end. They both seek out a treatment that helps people forget things like people, pets, or anything in between. Joel finds out that Clementine has received this treatment and doesn’t remember who he is and decides that he too will get the treatment as the breakup was too painful for him to bear.
As he goes through the treatment and memories of her are slowly getting erased, he realizes he might still have feelings for her as he explores both the good and the bad parts of their relationship.
Would you want to forget a person if they leave you?
This movie poses this very simple question to the audience. They show multiple perspectives on this question and how one might feel if this occurred to them or a person, they care about go through the procedure and you still remember them.
I think about my own relationships with the people in my life now. Would I want to forget them and their existence if they brought me so much pain that it hurt? Would their death or their departure from your life hurt enough that it was worth forgetting them entirely? I’m not sure if it would ever be worth it. I think about all the people that I’ve ever met. All of them, from the random lady who told me her life story in the waiting room of a hair salon to my best friends from college. There is no one I would want to leave out. Even if I would want to erase them from my memory, I could never choose to. Especially those I’ve gone through rough times with. They’ve taught me things about myself that I would have never learned otherwise.
As the movie ended and credits started to roll, I looked over at my boyfriend sitting on the couch and we asked each other this very question. What would we do if things ended, and this was an option that was presented to the each of us? Would we choose to forget one another?
When you care about others and your lives become entangled with one another, this choice of being vulnerable to the fact that things might not go perfectly is the biggest gamble we play with our hearts. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes we learn something from it. Sometimes we might have to find ourselves again. For many this gamble is one we get sold in stories of all mediums of how it ought or could be. It might even make you crave or chase intimacy with people. You might be judged for being partnered or being single. It’s romanticized time and time again hoping one day you realize that you need to love yourself truly to see the love in others. I hope one day you find the peace/piece you're looking for.
I have kept large plot points to a minimum in this review as I do highly recommend this movie! It’s an amazing piece of storytelling as well as it is thought provoking. Hope you all have a lovely rest of your week!