Starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson
Rating: A-
"...a highly inventive, stylistically irreverent tragi-comedy that teaches us a lot about what it means to live a full life, with all of its pains as well as its pleasures."
This film tells the story of a guy, Joel (Carrey), who discovers that his long-time girlfriend, Clementine (Winslet), has undergone the Lacuna procedure after they have tried for years to get their relationship working fluidly. Frustrated by the idea of still being in love with a woman who doesn't remember their time together, Joel agrees to undergo the procedure as well, to erase his memories of Clementine. The film, which takes place mostly within Joel's mind, follows his memories of Clementine backwards in time as each recent memory is replaced, and the procedure then goes on to the previous one, which is likewise seen, and then erased. Once the process starts, however, Joel realizes he doesn't really want to forget Clementine, so he starts smuggling her away into parts of his memory where she doesn't belong, thereby altering other things about his memories as well.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a film that gracefully, colorfully, and even irreverently engages in a serious philosophical inquiry regarding the value of emotional pain in our lives, and our subsequent (and perhaps inevitable), monomaniacal determination to overcome it. Is emotional pain valuable, or worthy of our time and energy? What is there to gain from such negative, debilitating emotions? Most people would have the same answers to these questions as Joel and Clementine: such feelings are too detrimental and unredeeming to have a place in the life of a healthy human being. There is a kind of virtue in forgetfulness to the extent that the pain one feels after a failed relationship is eliminated. So speaks the jilted lover, all too eager to move on with his or her life.
Of course, the person who would hold such a view would have to be a kind of raw utilitarian, whose sole moral imperative consists of maximizing pleasure, and correspondingly minimizing pain in the most basic of senses. This film questions precisely that utilitarian predisposition to eliminate pain. The person who would want to undergo the Lacuna procedure can only be described in negative terms: suffering, violated, oppressed by his past, uncertain of himself, weary. Indeed, those who seek forgetfulness would seem to be concerned and apprehensive about enduring the pressure of existence itself, impliedly condemning life for its sometimes overwhelming, unpredictable nature.
In a sense, the character of Clementine is emblematic of the chaotic, unruly nature of life’s ups and downs. She is a colorful, yet mysteriously intense and sensitive human being who experiences life as a series of extreme highs, and terrible lows. The notions of pleasure and pain coalesce perfectly in her character, as she is a metaphor for the inseparability of joy and sorrow—something a utilitarian surely could never accept.
When Joel seeks to cut off the pain in his life by erasing the memory of his relationship with Clementine, he realizes that he’s also cutting off the pleasure and joy that she brought to him. It is precisely because of this loss—the loss of his blissful memories—that he cannot finally accept the Lacuna procedure. Too much that is worthwhile is sacrificed in cutting off the pain. Indeed, Joel realizes that too much of life itself would go by the wayside in distancing himself from his sorrows.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a highly inventive, stylistically irreverent tragi-comedy that teaches us a lot about what it means to live a full life, with all of its pains as well as its pleasures. The suggestion is that even though life may indeed be full of suffering, the proper response may not be resentment or disengagement, but instead a kind of wholehearted acceptance. Surely, such unbridled affirmation of one’s precarious position in the world is as spiritually redeeming as it is utterly frightening. But in the face of this recognition, Gondry’s film responds with a most powerful rhetorical suggestion: Would we want to have it any other way?
I’d give Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind an A-.
