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    What Was Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind Really About?

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    Ro Ni
    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind explores the nature of memory and love through the story of Joel and Clementine, a couple who undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories after a break up. Initially it seems they do this to get over the pain of the break up, but it is revealed their last memories lead them to find each other again. The film questions whether simply forgetting and not dealing with pain truly allows someone to heal. It also shows how even after having memories erased, past behaviors and attractions can resurface again without learning from mistakes. Through Joel's memory erasure journey, the movie examines how memory shapes identity and love, and whether erasing the past changes someone's fate in the future

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    What Was Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind Really About?

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    Ro Ni
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    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind explores the nature of memory and love through the story of Joel and Clementine, a couple who undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories after a break up. Initially it seems they do this to get over the pain of the break up, but it is revealed their last memories lead them to find each other again. The film questions whether simply forgetting and not dealing with pain truly allows someone to heal. It also shows how even after having memories erased, past behaviors and attractions can resurface again without learning from mistakes. Through Joel's memory erasure journey, the movie examines how memory shapes identity and love, and whether erasing the past changes someone's fate in the future

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    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind explores the nature of memory and love through the story of Joel and Clementine, a couple who undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories after a break up. Initially it seems they do this to get over the pain of the break up, but it is revealed their last memories lead them to find each other again. The film questions whether simply forgetting and not dealing with pain truly allows someone to heal. It also shows how even after having memories erased, past behaviors and attractions can resurface again without learning from mistakes. Through Joel's memory erasure journey, the movie examines how memory shapes identity and love, and whether erasing the past changes someone's fate in the future

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    16 views4 pages

    What Was Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind Really About?

    Uploaded by

    Ro Ni
    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind explores the nature of memory and love through the story of Joel and Clementine, a couple who undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories after a break up. Initially it seems they do this to get over the pain of the break up, but it is revealed their last memories lead them to find each other again. The film questions whether simply forgetting and not dealing with pain truly allows someone to heal. It also shows how even after having memories erased, past behaviors and attractions can resurface again without learning from mistakes. Through Joel's memory erasure journey, the movie examines how memory shapes identity and love, and whether erasing the past changes someone's fate in the future

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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 4

    Mahmoud Riad

    What was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Really About?


    A couple chooses to delete each other's existence from their memories after a break up, but would that ensure a sound healing process?

    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was released in the US on March 19th, 2004, and has been reported to make a total worldwide gross of $72,258,126. Penned by Charles Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry, the film immerses itself in elements of science fiction, nonlinear narration, and surrealism to explore the nature of memory and romantic love. Winning an Academy Award for Kaufmans script, the movie was also recently tied for second most critically acclaimed film of the 2000s decade (as confirmed by the gawker website) so what is it really about?

    What we Initially Thought the Movie was About


    Reserved introvert Joel (Jim Carrey) and free spirited Clementine (Kate Winslet) have recently broken up. While Joel struggles with losing Clementine from his life, he is devastated to learn that she had erased him from his memory. He goes to the clinic responsible for her memory deletion, Lacuna, Inc. and seeks a consultation with its founder, Dr Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson). Joel decides that the only way that he could get over his feelings for Clementine is to go through the same procedure himself.

    The Tipping Point

    For the majority of the film, the audience is invited into a journey through Joels mind, reliving his memories with Clementine in reverse. As each memory is erased, Joel starts to forget why he broke up with her in the first place. Believing that he made a mistake, he ventures off with his perceived memory version of Clementine to escape the erasing memories, in hopes to preserve her place in his mind. The second tipping point of the film is presented in the secondary story arc of the film. While the Lacuna technician (played by Mark Ruffalo) is working on erasing Joels memory of Clementine, the audience is introduced to Mary (Kirsten Dunst), the Lacuna receptionist, and her inappropriate crush on the married Dr Mierzwiak. When Joels subconscious starts to struggle to escape memory deletion, Dr Mierzwiak is called in to supervise the procedure. He then shares an intimate moment alone with Mary, when she confesses her love to him, and they share a kiss. At that moment, they are seen by Mierzwiaks wife. Upon attempting to apologize to her, Mary finds out that she had actually been through all of this before. It is revealed to both the audience and Mary that she had an affair with Mierzwiak months before, which she had already erased from her memory.

    What the Movie was Really About


    Whenever we go through a painful breakup, our most common reactionary instinct is to wish that we could erase our ex-partner from our lives if we never knew what it was to love them, then we would probably not suffer this pain and longing after they are gone. The movies title comes from Alexander Popes poem Eloisa to Abelard(which Mary recites an excerpt off to Mierzwiak before confessing her love to him), in which Eloisa is tormented by powerful lingering feelings towards her former lover, Abelard, who has become a eunuch. The poems

    narrative seeks not forgiveness (Abelard turned eunuch in order to atone for the carnal sins he committed with Eloisa), but forgetfulness. But are memories the only barriers that former lovers need to overcome in order to heal? If these lovers run away from their pain by choosing to forget that it ever existed would they truly be free from it? As seen in Marys story arc, this was not the case. After going through the procedure, she still found herself attracted to Mierzwiak, and her personality still lead her to attempt to seduce him just like she did before. We are introduced to Joel and Clementine early on in the movie, in what the audience initially suspects as the first time the two characters meet. As the movie progresses, and Joels memories are erased, the audience gets to relive his earliest memory of Clementine of when they first met which is significantly different than their meeting in the beginning of the film. At this point, the twist is revealed that the first scene of them meeting is actually post memory deletion (in Joels case, it is the next day afterwards). Both Joel and Clementine wake up feeling like they lost something, but cant really point out what. The last memory they have of each other lead them to the same place where they had initially met so they can once again find each other. We get to see this in Joels case, where his very last vision of Clementine is her whispering meet me in Montauk to him. Waking up seconds later, he has this uncontrollable and unexplainable urge to go to Montauk, to subconsciously find what he has lost. The end scene of the movie shows both Joel and Clementine (who are both informed of their memory deletion by a devastated Mary) deciding to give their relationship another try. Those who believe the ending was positive see the message

    being that love will always find a way, even if you try to erase its existence from your life. Those who believe the ending was negative see the couple reuniting as tragic; there was a reason for their break up, and by not allowing each other to suffer and thus grow then they are destined just like Mary- to make the same mistakes over and over again. What did the movie mean to you? Please share your thoughts and ideas in the commentary section below.

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