“Random thoughts for Valentine's day, 2004.”

This is the opening line of Michel Gondry’s 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. For a multitude of reasons, this movie is my yearly Valentine’s Day movie. Once a year, on Valentine’s Day, I sit down and I watch this movie that is one of my favorite movies of all time (and has been since I first watched it around age 15). It’s a movie that has endless rewatch value, and revisiting it once a year is one of my favorite things ever.

Notably, it is not Valentine’s Day now — not even close to it, actually. However, I was inspired to write about this film now because we just watched it for one of my film studies classes. After getting to the end of our in-class discussion, I found that I still had a million more things to say about it, and where better to share them than here?

This might be a weird place to start, but for a movie that starts with its ending, it feels like the right introduction. There’s been a lot of question and analysis as to what this movie is about — as in, what’s the big moral? As my professor very correctly put it, you could probably ask every person in our class to write down their answer to this question, and there would be a lot of variety. In a way, that’s the brilliance of this movie. I am convinced that every single person who watches this movie can connect and relate to at least one of its characters. Beyond that, the broader themes of the narrative are something that affects everyone to at least some extent. After all, it’s about memories and the human mind.

For me, the emotional thesis statement of this movie can be found in these lines of dialogue:

“It's going to be gone soon.”

“I know.”

“What do we do?”

“Enjoy it.”

The way that simple “enjoy it” hits you is the thing that I always take with me after each rewatch of this movie. This idea that you can exist in a singular moment, and the emotional imprint of that moment will live on even as it slowly fades in your memory.

It’s impossible to talk about this movie without talking about the impermanence of memory. Take Joel, our main protagonist. One of the first things we learn about him is that he likes to document his life. He journals, he draws, he takes photos, he collects souvenirs. The opening lines of this film are part of what we presume is a journal entry written by Joel to take stock of his thoughts and his day. As we will go on to explore in this movie, memories are inherently impermanent. No matter how much we try to hold onto them and keep them clear, they are always going to fade with time. For myself, things like journaling and taking photos and buying souvenirs are an attempt to counteract that — a physical artifact to remember a particularly important moment. Those memories then become tied to those items.

When Joel makes the decision to erase Clementine, his first step is to gather all the physical items that have any connection back to her. It’s a mix of miscellaneous items and trinkets, the majority of which we as viewers do not receive the context of. But to Joel, each item links to a specific memory of Clementine, and therefore a specific emotional response is tied to each artifact. To erase the memory means to target its emotional core, as is explained by Dr. Mierzwiak. It makes sense, because even as a memory fades so far into the back of your mind that you don’t remember the actual event, the emotional impact is what lingers.

Emotion is everything in this movie. That feels like an obvious statement to make, but it’s so critical. This is a movie where you could spend days on end trying to piece together every little moment and its chronology (which, believe me, I’ve done). You could analyze every single technical detail and symbolic set piece, prop, or costume. There is a lot of very interesting and thorough analysis to be done here, and that’s a very fun thing to do when you’re someone like me who has seen this movie more times than I’ll attempt to count right now. However, I found myself in class feeling envious of the people who were watching it for the very first time. There is something really lovely about watching this movie for the first time and not trying to make sense of every tiny detail, but rather just letting it wash over you. You don’t have to have the entire chronology figured out to feel the emotional impact of it. This, more than many others, is a movie made up of moments, and it only requires the context of Joel and Clementine’s relationship (but not necessarily the specific timeline of it) for you to reach the emotional core of each moment.

More than anything, this movie wants us to be inside of Joel’s head. I partially mean that literally, as a large portion of this film does actually take place inside of Joel’s mind and memories. However, this is true even outside of the procedure. The opening lines of the film are Joel narrating his life, telling us his thoughts, and explaining his actions. We immediately know what he’s thinking and feeling, and that carries through the rest of the film. We get a lot of close-up shots of Joel’s face so that we can see his every emotion through Jim Carrey’s performance. We need to know what Joel is thinking and feeling at almost every moment of this film. Everything is framed through his perspective and his mind.

Interestingly, the only other character who gets this treatment is Mary (played by Kirsten Dunst). I could’ve written this entire piece just about this character, but I’ll try to contain myself. Similarly, the B plot of this movie has just as much to be said about it as the main storyline. We get a very intimate moment with Mary that is unlike anything received by any other character (besides Joel) when she listens to the tape from her own procedure. We’re alone in the room with her, and the camera is up close the way it often is with Joel, ensuring that we see every emotion that crosses her face. It invites us into her mind the way we have been invited into Joel’s for the duration of the movie and cements her as the central focus of the B plot.

It’s really notable that we get to connect with Mary in this way that we never do with Clementine. Clementine is obviously in much more of the movie, and is in many ways the secondary protagonist to Joel. However, we never really get Clementine outside of Joel. Most of her story is contained to his memories of her, and even their interactions outside of that center around their relationship. That’s not to say that the Clementine that exists in Joel’s memories does not differ from the Clementine that exists in real life, because she absolutely does.

There are a million things to be said about Clementine Kruczynski and the manic pixie dream girl character archetype, but that’s a separate essay that has also already been written by many people who are probably much smarter and more articulate than me. That being said, I do think it’s important to distinguish memory Clementine from real life Clementine. As we see different stages in her relationship with Joel through his memories, the way she is portrayed varies depending on where she stands with him. His opinion of her shifts and changes constantly throughout this movie, and he often doesn’t have a complete picture of her in his mind (both literally and metaphorically). For a character whose mantra is “too many guys think I'm a concept,” she often gets reduced to just that.

It’s important to note, too, that while Joel is our protagonist, we are not meant to think of him as perfect or without faults — quite the opposite, actually. Joel undergoes a lot of growth and change, which is why he’s able to make decisions the second time around that he never would’ve made before. We are not meant to take his perception of Clementine as the full picture of who she is, but it’s hard to fill in the blanks when we’re so limited to Joel’s perspective.

“Come back and make up a goodbye at least. Let's pretend we had one.”

I’m obligated, of course, to address the end of this movie. It’s intentionally ambiguous, which is one of the things I love about it. I will always come back to this looping scene of Joel and Clementine on the beach that is the very last thing we see. Here’s the thing, though — this moment isn’t real. It’s one of the moments that only took place in Joel’s mind as he and Clementine tried to resist the procedure. So what does it mean that the last shot of the movie is a loop of a memory that never actually happened?

My read of this ending is admittedly a bit pessimistic at first glace. There is something about the loop and the context of this seemingly happy moment that feels as though Clementine and Joel are bound to follow the same path they did in their original relationship, eventually leading to their break-up. Yes, there is a lot to be said about how much Joel has changed as a person. But how much can that change stick when a lot of that growth happened in his reliving of memories that he no longer has? And beyond that, how much would both of them have to change for the problems that arose in their original relationship to no longer be relevant?

“What a loss to spend that much time with someone only to find out that she's a stranger.”

That being said, there is a positive side to my interpretation. Clementine and Joel decide to give this relationship a chance having already heard each others’ tapes. They’ve quite literally heard the worst parts of themselves revealed through the words of the other. After literally being told the reasons why their relationship didn’t work and likely won’t work again, they still decide to try. This takes us back to the start, to the message to “enjoy it.” Just because a relationship ends in a break-up doesn’t negate its value, both in the positive memories and in the things it teaches its participants.

This can extend beyond romantic relationships and into a more general conversation about loss, which is the other big puzzle piece of what this movie’s larger meaning is. Loss of a relationship (be it romantic, platonic, or familial). Loss of memories as they fade to time. Loss of the person you used to be. All these things are considered a loss beyond what we typically think of as its definition. All of these things can be grieved and mourned. Rather than mourn the loss of a relationship that they never even gave a change, Clementine and Joel decide to try. So even if it ultimately does end in another break-up, as devastating as that may be, they’ll have gotten new memories of a relationship and a life together. Joel even realizes the value of this earlier in the film, which is why he tries to stop the procedure.

It’s better to have and to hold onto the memories than to have nothing. The “spotless mind” being a mind filled with emptiness will not bring you any comfort.

Would you erase it if you could? I know I wouldn’t. I’d rather draw a picture, or take a photo, or write it down in my journal. I’d rather put the souvenir on my shelf. Yes, I might look at those things and feel sad, or regretful, or nostalgic. But isn’t it better to feel that than to feel only the nothingness?

“Enjoy it.”