Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is very different than any movie I’ve ever seen. It was directed by Michel Gondry, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. I actually have seen it once before, so it was easier for me to see how it was pieced together this time. Eternal Sunshine is about a couple called Joel (Carrey) and Clementine (Winslet) who have had very good times, but like all couples, very bad times, too. After a particularly tough fight, impulsive Clementine gets Joel erased from her memory. After learning what Clementine has done, Joel is reeling from sadness and wants the same procedure done. Only after he is in the process of getting all remnants of Clementine erased from his head does he realize how much she means to him, even the stubborn, selfish parts of her.
The first time I saw the movie, I did not realize that it went out of order, starting with the second “first meeting” of Joel and Clementine. The editing was all over the place, but added to the surrealism of the adventure inside Joel’s head. This movie had some of the same similarities as a collage does. It feels just like pieces of Joel’s life, thrown together to create a whole, or at least his adult life.
The movie was basically one big collage, moving you from one spot to another as quickly as Joel was thinking it. Even though his memories were out of order, it added to the tone and Joel’s own increasing awareness of how much Clementine means to him. Once Joel starts to get his memories erased, the memories are first of the hard times that he and Clementine had; of their last fight, their arguments about having a child and Joel telling her she wouldn’t be a good mother. The scenes when Joel’s memory is getting erased are all overlapped; things are sucked out of the scene as soon as it is erased from Joel’s mind. This parallels the fact that all the scenes have a similar aspect, since Joel’s mind transitioned from one of the scenes to the other. This is also made evident because the audience is aware that the Erasers are trying to erase all remnants of Clem, and obviously she is in every scene that is going on in Joel’s head at that time.
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