Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind begins as two former lovers “meet” again. Joel and Clementine dated for two years in the past, but ended up having each other erased from their memories. Clementine was the first to erase her memories, and when Joel finds out about the procedure, he decides to participate as well. The film then shows what is happening in Joel’s mind. After seeing some of his happy memories he decides he does not want to forget Clementine after all and attempts place his memories of her in other parts of his mind, such as his childhood. This is to prevent the procedure from detecting those particular memories. While Joel is watching his memories, he sees Clementine disappearing from them, until the very end.
The pair end up meeting at the same place they did before. While they do not remember each other, are still initially drawn to each other because their personalities have not changed. Eventually, Joel and Clementine figure out the truth of their situation when they are given tapes from their erasure sessions. At first, Clementine is skeptical to stay with Joel because of the past, but they end up back together anyway.
This film brings up questions like how effective would erasing memories be? Clementine and Joel had affected each others’ minds and personalities and helped shape each other. Erasing one’s memory does not allow them to learn from their past and as we see, Joel and Clementine blindly go into their relationship for a second time.
In Richard Taylor’s “Space and Time,” he discusses the relativity of time. He questions whether or not time has a fixed direction. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, time is reversed, so does that mean according to Taylor that time has no direction? While Joel and Clementine traveled to the past in their minds, when they woke up, they were still the same people, so was there really any benefit to erasing their memories?
Well I think even though their memories of each other were erased they were still the people they had originally been before they got together. Instead of going back in time they relived what had already happened to them in their memories and then reset themselves to an earlier point in their memories. It's like when your playing a video game and you restart at a previously saved point. Being that they were the same people from the point before they met they would still be attracted to each other as they were when they first met. If they really wanted to change their reaction to each other they would have to go far enough back into their memories to and erase the hings that made them the person they are today. If they did that then in a sense they would be restarting a new game or life in stead of attempting to live the old one differently So yeah their was no benefit to erasing their memories of each other in the first place because being the persons they had been the were bound to fall for each other.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Monikai's response about their attempts at erasing their memories of each other as a form of moving on and forgetting being of no benefit. It's like the universally known truism that you must learn from your mistakes. Although some of our mistakes can be heartbreakingly painful, without them there would be no growth.
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