Eternal Sunshine

I re-watched "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" this weekend, and I'm pleased to say that it's still my favorite movie.

If you haven't watched it, maybe you should stop reading this post now.

There are any number of reasons why it's my favorite movie, but perhaps the chief among them is the fact that, after watching it, I stayed up until 4:00am to discuss it. The next night, Jenny came home and we talked about it some more, probably another 30-60 minutes before I went to turn in. We talked about the relationship prospects of the lead characters; what's going on with the interloper, Patrick; Clementine and her use-and-deconstruction of the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" trope; the nature of the procedure with relation to how a person's memory is erased by the process the movie sets out, and more.

It is high-praise when I can say that everything in a piece of fiction is intentional. There's enough to Eternal Sunshine that you watch it once and you might think "what the hell just happened," but you can go into the text of it, so to speak, and emerge with a pretty decent explanation. I think there's enough evidence to answer many of the "how did that happen?" questions within the movie.

It's been all I can handle already to type the last two paragraphs without going to TV Tropes and reading the article there, or trying to find some literary-style criticism about the movie. It seems like every time I've watched it (and I've watched it probably double-digit times by now) I've been able to find something new to think or talk about, or failing that, I feel something different based on where I am in my life at that particular point in time.

Jenny's question is to ask at the end of the movie about the future relationship of Clementine and Joel. Faced with these audio tapes of themselves talking about the negative aspects of their relationship, they decide to go for it anyway. But who's to say that they won't end back up at square one, once again erasing one another? I have a hard time arguing that Clementine and Joel will make it; but relationships on the whole are difficult to predict. What I do think is that they will be a better match for one another this time around, if only because during the process of erasing Clementine from his memory, Joel inadvertently had memories of shame and humiliation erased. I sense that his personal style will be able to adapt more easily to the quickly-shifting Clementine.

I think a lot of people want to say that Eternal Sunshine is about fate and love. I'm not sure that I buy it. I find that as I go deeper into the TV Tropes page (okay, I gave in). What makes Dream Clementine tell Joel to go to Montauk, I can't say, but dreams are strange. Clementine hinted in prior dialogue that she wanted to go to Montauk before changing her mind and going up to the Charles River with Patrick during the erasing. I'm think the Mary/Dr. Mierzwiak relationship may be explained by the unwillingness of the patient, rather than fated. There's definitely an argument to be had for fate in the world of Eternal Sunshine, but it's written in a way where you can make a satisfying argument that it's not.