Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

Posted on March 8, 2006. Filed under: Movies, Reviews |

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each prayer accepted, and each wish resign’d.

— Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard”

Everyone will meet and fall in love with the person destined, no matter how far you go to avoid it, even to the extent of erasing the person from memory …….

Would you stop loving someone their memories are erased from your brain? Or would love happen again when you meet the person?

Saw the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind” on the weekend. The movie works on different levels. The presentation is a bit different, a kind of Maze which the viewer has to walk through. One interesting part of watching the movie is moving through the maze and unravelling the story. The other is the story itself. I liked the movie on both counts, but more so for the message it conveyed for me.

The movie is a cool love story between an impulsive, wild, extrovert woman, Clementine and a shy, introvert man, Joel.

They are in love, but hate many things about each other. One fine day, on an impulse, Clementine decides she has had enough of this and undergoes a procedure wherby she erases all memories of Joel. Joel mops around for a few days and then decides that the best way out would be to erase all memories of Clementine from his brain.

The procedure starts. Joel’s brain is scanned and one by one, the memories of Clementine are found and destroyed. Suddenly Joel wakes up to a level of semi-consiousness where he starts becoming aware that the memories he had treasured the most in his life are being taken away from him. He wants to stop the process but can’t. Then starts a fight between Joel and the erasing machine. Joel’s sub-consious mind along with whatever is left of Clementine’s memories tries to hide the memories in places which would not be reached and erased. Joel has treasured Clementine the most in his life and he is really afraid to let her go away. This part is shown very well in the movie. The way Joel tries to hide away Clementine’s memories is extremely well done.

Despite all efforts by Joel, Clementine’s memories do get erased.

He wakes up after the procedure, not remembering Clementine nor any thing related to her. On an impulse he skips work and goes to the beach, where he meets …. … ….. , yes of course, Clementine 🙂

Both of them get together and even though they have forgotten everything about each other (or because of it), start falling in love all over again, Love triumphs !

Love is not about the past .. about the memories … about what was shared between two people. Love is about the present, about what you are, about what you are sharing with someone. Joel feared that losing Clementine’s memories would mean losing Clementine, but that was not to be.

Eminently watchable .. highly recommended.