Living with four roommates in an apartment is an interesting experience when it comes to entertainment. One giant television in the living beckons for the community experience, yet it’s nearly impossible to have people in the same room at the same time for a film. With three of my roommates having girlfriends, I find myself in situations where I get to be that extra wheel in the room. I didn’t mind this evening when a couple wanted to pop in a film, and watch one of my all-time favorites: Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. A unique look into the world of the human memory, and how we are affected, but not defined by our experiences and memories, both the good and the bad.
This movie’s about 4 years old, so I won’t go into a full on review. Just keep in mind that I place this film in my top 3 favorite films of all time. If you’re familiar with the writer Charlie Kaufman’s works (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), you’ll know that the themes, structure, and story devices are very similar, and require a bit of thought to really unpack.
The plot in a few sentences: Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) both submit to a memory-erasing procedure to rid their minds of each other after a rocky patch in their relationship. While racing through his memories during the procedure, Joel realizes he wants to keep his memories, and risks everything to save them.
That’s right, the majority of the film takes place in Joel’s mind. My last semester in school, I gave a presentation on three of Charlie Kaufman films: Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and this one. Some would consider the three to be a sort of trilogy concerning the nature of human identity and it’s resilience within existence. Without giving too much away, Eternal Sunshine really drives home the idea that our disposition, our nature, cannot be changed by our memories, or be removed (if there was a way to have our memories removed). At the same time, we see that throughout life’s ups and downs, there are things we’ll always want to hold on to. Joel realizes that although there are some uneventful memories in his life with Clementine, but all the good, meaningful ones that they share make the bad ones worth keeping, and they certainly were not a waste of time.
The most beautiful scene in a long line of beautiful scenes features Joel and Clementine reminiscing about the first night they met in Joel’s own memory about the first night they met. Classic Kaufman. As the unoccupied strangers’ beach house they broke into comes crashing down around them (results from the memory-erasing procedure occuring at that moment), it’s expected that Joel chickens out and bails on her like he really did that first night. “I wish I had stayed. I wish I had done a lot of things…” Not only are our memories worth embracing, but the experiences we have creating such memories are ours to control. Sometimes it isn’t until retrospect do we wish things were different, but even though they’re not, the memories are still important to us.
We are created in the image of God. Our essence as human beings precedes our existence, and the implications of the Kaufman trilogy, exposing that nature of ours as resilient through time suggest even more interesting implications on a theistic metaphysics level. Since I’m no expert on the topic, I’ll leave it to you the reader. Give it a shot.
