WATCH ALONG: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Wow, Ashleigh. Your "Let's Talk About It" hit me harder than the movie ever has. You brought a new light to it that I had never seen before. I haven’t watched this movie many times, so I didn’t remember most of it, but your commentary made me cry as well. Your analysis was so on point, and honestly, it was something I really needed to hear right now as I’m going through some dark times mentally. So thank you for that.

I always judge how good a movie is by how much I continue to think about it later. If it sticks with me and makes me ponder things, it's good.

I had a Clementine in my life once. Sad when it ended. Then this movie came out and watching it made me even sadder, but it was a really good movie, and eerily relatable. At the time, I kinda wished I could have erased my memories. And now "Eternal Sunshining" is like an expression to erase your memory. There's a lot of movies I wish I could eternal sunshine and watch again for the first time.

Awe, I loved that it touched you in the end. I had the same reaction the first time I saw it. It also shows you that even if you erase the memories, the feelings aren't gone. Mary had her memory erased but fell in love with the doctor all over again. Joel and Clem met again after their erasures and still sparked again, were attracted to each other again and wanted each other again. That's why it hurts so much when you lose someone/something you love. I think the love stays, in some weird way, the love will always be there.

Ok, so I'm getting this message: "Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot This helps protect our community. Learn more Sign in" I'm signed in and it's still not giving me access. Could you just send me the YouTube link?

I think you figured it out exactly in the end. We are the sum total of our experiences, good and bad, and as we see in the movie, those are intertwined. Since the memory erasure process starts with the newer memories and works backward, at first, it makes sense that Joel wants to get rid of his history with Clementine, because she's treating him very poorly (even if he is, as she says, also very closed-off and internal rather than sharing his feelings with her more openly). However, naturally, by going backward through the relationship, it eventually arrives at the meaningful moments, the good times, the exhilarating early stages, and Joel is reminded that even if it went bad, or even if it was mostly bad, there are parts of it that are meaningful to him. One of the subtle things that only some of the viewers catch on their first viewing is that post-procedure Joel meets Clementine on the E train and says "I don't know any jokes about your name." However, when we see Joel on the beach meeting Clementine originally, he does know that joke. In the middle, he tries to hide Clementine in a memory of him as a baby being bathed in the sink, with Joel's mom singing "Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine..." When Dr. Mierzwiak goes looking for Clementine and Joel hides her in that memory, it gets deleted along with Clementine, so post-procedure Joel no longer remembers the song, or being bathed, or his beloved Huckleberry Hound doll. Another thing that I think is very telling and very subtle is that when Dr. Mierzwiak confesses to Mary that she had the procedure, he says "you wanted it done..." but when she listens to the tape, and she breaks down saying "Oh Howie, I can't do this..." he interjects, saying "We agreed it's for the best." One thing that is very neat is that director Michel Gondry tried to use low-tech, in-camera effects wherever possible. When Joel is pulling Clementine along, through the train station memory and back to Dr. Mierzwiak's office, the camera pans from Joel at the doorway with Clementine, down to the doctor, and then to Joel sitting at the table, a trick which was accomplished by having Carrey take off his hat and jacket, run behind the camera, and sit down after the camera pans off of him. The tiny Jim under the table is a forced-perspective set, and in the scene where they argue about having a baby at the flea market, a shot of Carrey in the foreground in focus and Clementine, blurry, directly behind him, was achieved by holding a pane of frosted glass between them. The film was written by Charlie Kaufman, who is famous for his bizarre, meta, head-trip kind of movies. Mike, below, mentioned Kaufman's major breakout debut feature, Being John Malkovich (1999), which was followed by Adaptation (2002), and after this, Synecdoche New York (2009) and I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020), among others. This film won Kaufman, director Michel Gondry, and Pierre Bismuth Academy Awards for their original screenplay.

I am SO excited for this!!!!

I can't think about this movie without thinking about "Being John Malkovich" (1999, John Cusack, Cameron Diaz)