Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind...

While watching the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind, I was captivated by the movie's well edited, direction and the underlying fantasy of memory erasing. This movie makes the audience question themselves from a point of view that is so bizarre, and yet believeable, that if we erased our bad memories, we can controll our present happiness. This is strange, because as I wastched the film it seemed that those who erased their minds were not really in control of thier natural self, their subconcious self, making them prone to repeat past mistakes now erased. This repetition, of past mistakes, really highlights a central theme that is presented throughout the movie, which is that memories, both good, and bad, are necessary in shaping our personalities, and self-image, as well as building up our experience. In the chaos of the movie, the audience learns how the bad events whether in love or life, are necessary in keeping one grounded and hopeful, that our lives are ordered by the choices we make through the chaos. I also correlated the notion of inducing an acute case of alzheimers (memory erasing) and the readings on those who said that when loved ones were diagnosed with alzheimers that they were not the same person. The question I asked myself was why would people want to change themselves just because the memory wasn't the best. I believe that the bad memories in life help man understand why the good feels good, and strive for the great. The movie was perfectly planned in its editing and everything seems to correlate to something else both forwards and backwards throughout the movie. Take for instance Clemintines hair color, the names of the colors range from blue ruin to agent orange, and these colors help navigate the audience through the messy flashback scenes of Joels minds. The significant thing about Clemintines hair is that her mood reflects the name of the color of her hair. When she has her hair agent orange she seems to be on the warpath, not really caring who or what gets in her way, i.e. fire hydrants, Joel, and then decides to erase her memory of Joel. The blue ruin is very reflective of Clemintines mixed emotions, because both Joel and Clemintine are the creators of their own chaos, one is so ordered and the other so chaotic. The movie has many levels of meaning and would be very interesting to watch in a few years just to see how my perspective of the movie changed.

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Accessed on March 7, 2010