The erasing process and with it, the movie works backward in time, beginning with the most recent memories, full of fights and ill-will. But as the process reaches further back, to moments of tenderness and joy, Joel rediscovers his love for Clementine and realizes he does not want to lose these memories after all. He tries frantically to find an obscure corner of his mind where he can hide some scrap of her from the technicians' hunt and destroy mission, but they always find him.
He watches helplessly as, one by one, each memory is irretrievably lost--titles fade from the covers of books, passersby disappear, and then Clementine too vanishes, only to reappear in another doomed recollection, all the way back to their very first meeting, at a beach party in Montauk.
The story-told-in-reverse is a common enough movie device, usually utilized to conceal information from the audience. But Kaufman and Gondry use it to a different end, gradually uncovering not hidden facts but forgotten emotions. There are no unexpected twists or sudden revelations about Joel and Clementine, just a wistful backward view of love's decay.
Unlike Kaufman's previous work, Eternal Sunshine sets out not to stun us with the originality of its gimmicks, but rather to wound us with the earnest familiarity of its sentiment. At least, that's the case when it comes to the film's treatment of Joel and Clementine's relationship. But even as the film explores that two-year love affair, it also recounts the events of one night--the night that Joel lies in bed while Lacuna's memory thieves pillage his brain. The scatter-brained, vaguely adolescent technicians in charge of the procedure are Stan Mark Ruffalo, endearing in Clark Kent glasses and a chaotic pompadour and Patrick Elijah Wood, looking all of When Stan's quasi-girlfriend Mary Kirsten Dunst comes over to see him, Patrick decides to leave and spend time with his own new squeeze, Clementine--yes, the same one, whom he fell for while erasing her mind a few days earlier and has been wooing with lines stolen from her lost memories of Joel ever since.
While Stan and Mary party around the dreaming Joel, the procedure hits a snag; Stan is forced to call in Lacuna's founder, Dr. Howard Mierzwiak Tom Wilkinson , for whom Mary has long held a powerful schoolgirl crush.
These amorous convolutions culminate in the one great surprise of the film, a poignant twist that underscores the cruelty of Lacuna's benevolent oblivion and both complicates and clarifies Joel and Clementine's post-erasure reunion. At its core, Eternal Sunshine is about the need for atonement and redemption. Their past together is like a frayed nerve that leads nowhere, the phantom limb of the amputee.
No matter how many times they wander in the footsteps of their lost memories they can never recapture them. It is only through Fate or God's grace or True Love--or, for the more literal-minded, a glitch in Lacuna's process--that they are given a second chance to make themselves whole.
These are admirably big themes. Eternal Sunshine loses its way on occasion, particularly in the sequences where Joel reverts first to childhood and then to infancy in his effort to find a place in his memory where he can hide Clementine. In both scenes the figure we are watching onscreen ceases to be Joel Barrish and becomes immediately recognizable as Jim Carrey, circa The mugging and mewling Carrey brings to these scenes might be funny in another context, but they relate to nothing else in the tone or content of the film.
One almost wonders whether there's a rider in Carrey's contract insisting, "Star retains the right to do something rubbery with his face at least once during project. An indication of how confusing the film is? Over the course of two days, we see a bunch of flashbacks that show how their tumultuous previous relationship ended when they each had the other person removed from their memories. The cast, itself, is what makes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind so good, because this is the film that made me actually love Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey.
Kate Winslet, in particular, with her salon-worthy coloured hair — which, itself, played a huge part in character building — was amazing, giving us the coolness of a manic pixie dream girl while breaking that stereotype with her perfectly flawed portrayal of Clementine. Her eyes, especially, are so expressive , making those odd running scenes one of the most interesting. Jim Carrey, too, gave such a soulfully-understated performance that he made sad Joel one to root for, and made the whole premise totally believable.
Fifteen years down the line, they may forget the specific details that led to the falling out, but the subconscious effects of the marred friendship may still be evident in their interactions. Similar is the case of Joel and Clementine. Though they wiped their brains of each other, their regressive memories reminded them of why they fell in love in the first place. Even after they find out how their first relationship ended, they choose to move forward and try again.
The power of love and experience is what creates the individual, and the film suggests that simply having a spotless mind does not bring eternal sunshine. After their affair, Howard for some reason kept Mary in his employ, allowing her to see and interact with him on a daily basis. The sparks that birthed their original lust happened again because the seeds were already planted.
The film also touches on the theme of regret. When Joel and Clementine are presented with the opportunity to attempt their relationship a second time, Joel is pushed forward after witnessing all the things he did wrong the first time. He learns about her and about himself. And even though they both know the factors that attract them to each other may eventually drive them insane, sacrificing the good times would be worse.
She then works to destroy the company to prevent anyone else from having to undergo repeated trauma after discovering the truth about their mistake.
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