Introduction
The film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind posits several questions relating to the value of memories from past romantic relationships.1 Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) spend a large part of the film trying to determine whether the collective memories of their past relationship enable them to be in a more emotionally fulfilled state.2 The film’s parallel yet opposing narrative pathways enable the audience to immersively reflect on philosophical inquires due to the required effort an audience exerts to properly process and understand the film’s nonlinear story arc, as well as the downward trend of Joel and Clementine’s happiness in their relationship. Therefore, these characteristics and unique elements inherent in the reverse chronology of Joel’s dream—which bends the audience’s perception of Joel and Clementine’s relationship to reflect the happiest moments toward the end of the film—provide two explanations for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s dual-track structure. The film leads audience members to examine the core question of remembrance through the viewing experience’s reliance on memory and parallels to Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence.
Plot, Structure, and Purpose
It is important to establish the film’s structure and makeup before examining the reasoning that drives its design. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind begins with Joel and Clementine meeting one another.3 In retrospect, their introduction holds greater nuance below the surface; this opening scene is Joel and Clementine’s second time meeting, as they erased their respective memories of each other and their relationship shortly prior.4 The film then jumps back in time to their initial breakup (although the audience remains unaware of the mixed chronology of events at this stage of the film) and Joel’s discovery that Clementine has erased him from her memory through a medical treatment from the private firm Lacuna Incorporated, which Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) runs.5 Joel’s heartbreak leads to his impulsive decision to erase his memories of Clementine, with the better part of the film taking place in Joel’s mind during the memory-erasing procedure.6 The story of the Lacuna employees conducting the procedure carries important thematic significance insofar as it reveals erased memories of Lacuna receptionist Mary Svevo (Kirsten Dunst) and is incorporated into Joel’s dreams of Clementine being erased from his memory in reverse.7 In other words, two parallel storylines in opposite chronological directions constitute Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s dual-track narrative structure.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s structure promotes its inquiry into the value of remembering, specifically questioning audiences on whether they would choose to erase any negative experiences in their memories. To understand the full nature of these questions, however, this paper must explain the “shape of life” hypothesis.8 The placement of events in a story is just as important, if not more so, than the grand difference between the aggregate of positive and negative experiences.9 Simply put, the first and last romantic interactions shared between two people generally carry unique significance in a romantic relationship. While a number of successful romantic relationships generally follow an upward trend with shared levels of happiness over time and plateau at a high point, unsuccessful relationships are characterized by an uncontrolled downward trend in happiness over time. This means that such relationships usually end at a low point, relative to the feelings and emotions present at the start of the relationship. Due to the limits of human memory and its dulling over time, individuals have a proclivity to focus on the outcome of a story. In the case of failed romances, this means that two lovers may largely focus on the unsavory termination of their relationship.
The first memory to arise in Joel’s reverse-chronological memory erasure is a bitter fight with Clementine that leaves both parties heartbroken.10 Since their past romance ultimately had a painful, downward trend, audience members visualize their shared story as a negative correlation between time and happiness. However, because the procedure erases Joel’s memories in reverse chronological order, the dream relives the relationship’s conclusion first, with previous events following shortly after.11 Hence, the reversal of the perception of events in Joel’s narrative track inverts viewers’ perception of the relationship’s shape from negative to positive, all without altering the core events characterizing their romance. Joel and the audience experience the relationship’s original feelings of joy and happiness as the film proceeds, thereby emphasizing the positive aspects of their mutual chemistry and allowing Joel to re-examine the relationship in a newer light. The inversion of Joel’s memories serves to highlight the intrinsic beauty of love and relationships without the human bias for happy endings.12
Such an experience of cinematic choreography comes with its own unique set of positive emotions; it is only possible because memories are fundamental to defining the shape of life, a concept best understood as the distribution of momentary well-being throughout an individual’s life.13 While these memories are erased from Joel’s mind, viewers are reminded of and given access to these memories. By piecing together the film’s sequence of events, the audience’s attention is implicitly called to re-examine their personally assigned valuation of memories, past experiences, and—most importantly—the chronology of past experiences. This point is further emphasized through Lacuna employee Patrick Wertz (Elijah Wood)’s manipulation of Clementine through her memories from the erasure procedure; for instance, Patrick uses Joel’s quotes and mementos, resulting in Clementine having a breakdown and ending an outing.14 Despite Patrick’s ability to recreate the conditions and rhetoric from the unsuccessful relationship’s blissful moments, his failure to understand the significance of placement and the shape of life results in Clementine’s breakdown and eventually her termination of their relationship to his dismay.
The Nietzsche Connection and Eternal Recurrence
The core questions of structure and memory raised by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—as well as I Love You, I Love You,15 a French science fiction film that served as a primary influence for the filmi—are closely related to philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence, as outlined in his work The Gay Science.ii Nietzsche introduces this idea through a hypothetical scenario: a demon traps an individual in a loop of experiencing their life down to its exact sequence.16 After proposing this thought experiment, Nietzsche asks readers if they would embrace an opportunity to relive their life, with all its pleasures and pains down to the exact details, in perpetuity.17 Nietzsche then claims that whether an individual chooses to embrace or curse such a pattern of repetition says much about the fortune of their experiences in life; more specifically, they would relive their life if they are lucky to have experienced what can be deemed a “tremendous moment.”18 Transcendent and luminous moments that meet this threshold render a lifetime of waiting, suffering, or numb emptiness worthwhile. It would be a moment that individuals would live and die for, as there is nothing else wanting in the grand scope of the assets and liabilities inherent in the experience of life. Joel indicated that he experienced such a tremendous moment when lying on his back with Clementine on the frozen Charles River, stating that he “could die right now, Clem[entine] ... [with him being] happy.”19 In other words, Joel’s moment with Clementine was worth living and dying for.
Nietzsche does not clarify in The Gay Science whether a person living in the hypothetical demon’s construction of eternal recurrence would be aware of the true nature of their reality. The concept may be a sadistic joke played by the demon to impose this situation at the threshold between death and rebirth without carrying over into the afterlife. An alternative outlook may be that such torture—for individuals who originally curse the demon after hearing about this fate assigned to them—is magnified when a person retains this knowledge of the nature of their reality but has lost all free will to change anything in a subsequent life. Perhaps this is simply a parable by Nietzsche to encourage people to live as if this were true so that they fill life with moments worthy of experiencing again. The answer to whether the individual in question retains the knowledge and memories of their prior existence has important implications, particularly regarding the film.
There is an interpretation of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that takes on eternal recurrence’s ambiguities. Lacuna’s memory erasure machine is purposefully explained to be imperfect in its operation and function, such that the mind retains a small trace of the erased memories in question. While Joel loses his direct recollection of Clementine, it is also shown that his desperation to retain some memories overrides the machine at certain moments.20 Joel can create a new experience for himself in the very last tranche of the reverse-chronology dream sequence; he imagines Clementine whispering to him to meet her in Montauk, hoping that this can be a catalyst to rebuild their memories and possibly their relationship.21 Despite this artificial, newly-formed memory being wiped away, it ends up leaving an imprint and urge within Joel, the details of which are never fully communicated to the audience.22 The morning after completing the procedure, Joel decides to call in sick to work and hop on a train to Montauk on impulse.23 Joel was able to implicitly recognize that Montauk was significant, that he could find a person or object of importance there. This endeavor is successful, as Clementine is inexplicably on the train at the same moment for reasons of her own.24 Taking a seat near Joel on their train ride back to the city, Clementine wonders out loud if she knows him and tries to work out their connection.25
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind poses a question similar to Nietzsche’s proposed scenario of eternal recurrence, albeit slightly altered. The conclusion of the film reveals the full truth of Joel and Clementine’s history (which includes the context of the memory erasure procedure and their respective tapes candidly describing the ills of each other as romantic partners) to themselves and the audience vis-á-vis Mary’s disgruntled actions: stealing Lacuna’s records and mailing them to patients who had their memories erased.26 While individuals at the hands of Nietzsche’s demon have no recourse of deciding whether to consent to eternal recurrence, Joel and Clementine encounter very different prospects. They are empowered by a knowledge of their shared history—and the bitter feelings of each other—to decide whether or not to share a future relationship.
This is not merely a question of whether Joel and Clementine should choose to relive their previous relationship in its entirety because this situation is not based on the exact parameters of Nietzsche’s original conceptualization of eternal recurrence. It teases the possibility that events this time around may result in a different outcome. Both characters have only been informed of their predicament through tapes of their angst-riddled post-relationship perspectives.27 Despite this, the potential to reach a tremendous moment similar to that described by Nietzsche is within Joel and Clementine’s reach once again. By agreeing to try their relationship for a second time and accepting the seemingly inevitable moments of pain that will come along with it, both characters embrace the opportunity to repeat their past decisions in a relatively plausible parallel to eternal recurrence. Regardless of the events they will experience going forward, Joel and Clementine have calculated that the harmful components of their relationship are well worth it, relative to the pursuit of a tremendous future moment and the development of experiences to contribute to the shape of their lives.
A potential objection to this interpretation of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s dual-track structure lies in the audience’s understanding of Joel and Clementine’s relationship. In other words, the audience could interpret Joel and Clementine restarting their relationship as a cautionary tale. After all, the process of reexamining memories could be understood as misleading, relative to the notion of how individuals prefer their lives to be shaped. One shortcoming associated with this argument concerns the saliency of Joel’s memory. Apart from his impulse to take the day off of work and travel to Montauk, there is no direct evidence suggesting that Joel remembers or is inclined to be attracted to Clementine through the lingering traces of his buried memories, at least before receiving his pre-procedure Lacuna records from Mary. It is Joel and Clementine’s mutual chemistry, rather than traces of memories, which drives the course of the new interactions between them and, by extension, their acceptance of uncertainty at the end of the film.
Concluding Thoughts
With its namesake taken from Alexander Pope’s poem Eloisa to Abelard, the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind presents members of the audience with two options: a myriad of positive and negative experiences, or the indiscriminate removal of a whole subset of romantic memories. Such a decision is perhaps best encapsulated through the name of Dr. Howard Mierzwiak’s company, Lacuna, which translates into “hole” in Latin. The film encourages viewers to try and find their own answers to this question vis-á-vis structural choices and philosophical exploration. The reverse chronology of the memory erasure procedure sequences promotes the film’s focus on the value of memory, allowing Joel and the audience to examine the value of memories and chronology in the formation of the shape of life. This also provides a unique lens through which to examine the core philosophical inquiry of the film: whether or not individuals would go through life experiences again and the defining factors for individuals making this decision.
By the end of the film, Joel and Clementine eventually decide to repeat their past experiences in pursuit of what Nietzsche deems as a tremendous moment. The reflection of audience members on questions of memory is essential, as such inquiries into the role of memory are fundamental to the identity of people, relationships, and love. While individuals currently have no means of removing painful memories through elective medical procedures, memories should be evaluated on their prudential, moral, and eudaimonistic value, relative to notions of happiness and fulfillment in life.
References
Collins, K. Austin. “Why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Still Resonates.” Vanity Fair, March 19, 2019. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/03/-eternal-sunshine-of-the-sp...
Colvin, Ian. “Out of Focus: “Je T’aime, Je T’aime” Combines Science Fiction, Romance.” Daily Bruin, March 4, 2014. https://dailybruin.com/2014/03/04/out-of-focus-je-taime-je-taime-combine...
Day, William. "I Don't Know, Just Wait: Remembering Remarriage in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." In The Philosophy of Charlie Kaufman, edited by David LaRocca, 132-54. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011.
Dorsey, Dale. "The Significance of a Life’s Shape." The University of Chicago Press Journal: Ethics 125, no. 2 (2015): 303-330.
Gondry, Michel, director. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Focus Features, 2004.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
Resnais, Alain, director. Je T’aime, Je T’aime. Les Productions Fox Europa, 1968.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime (1973 Review).” The Real Paper. January 17, 1973. https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2021/11/je-taime-je-taime-1973-review-2/.
Smith, David L. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Question of Transcendence." Journal of Religion & Film 9, no. 1 (2005): 3-17.
Toles, George. "Trying to Remember Clementine." In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, edited by Christopher Grau, 111-57. London: Routledge, 2009.
Notes
i For more on Je T’aime, Je T’aime’s influence on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, see Collins, “Why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Still Resonates;” Colvin, “Out of Focus: “Je T’aime, Je T’aime” Combines Science Fiction, Romance;” and Rosenbaum, “Je T’aime, Je T’aime (1973 Review).”
ii For past scholarly publications on Nietzschean themes present in the film (including eternal recurrence), see Day, “I Don't Know, Just Wait: Remembering Remarriage in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” 132-154; Smith, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Question of Transcendence,” 3-17; and Toles, “Trying to remember Clementine,” 111-157.
1 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
2 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
3 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
4 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
5 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
6 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
7 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
8 Dorsey, “The Significance of a Life’s Shape,” 303-306.
9 Dorsey, 305.
10 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
11 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
12 Dorsey, “The Significance of a Life’s Shape,” 303-306.
13 Dorsey, 304.
14 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
15 Resnais, dir., Je T’aime, Je T’aime.
16 Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, 273.
17 Nietzsche, 273.
18 Nietzsche, 273.
19 Smith, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Question of Transcendence,” 7.
20 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
21 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
22 Day, “I Don't Know, Just Wait: Remembering Remarriage in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” 134.
23 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
24 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
25 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
26 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
27 Gondry, dir., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.