Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind Review

To be completely honest Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind by Michael Gondry made absolutely no sense to me, at first. It all seemed like a jumbled mess and I couldn’t figure out what Gondry was trying to get across to us as viewers. Little did I know, this he was doing on purpose. He wanted us to be a little confused and in fact scrambling to find the answers because that’s how his characters in the movie felt.  The main character Joel finds himself with the random need to get on a train to Montauk and he can’t seem to find out why. On this train he meets a girl named Clementine she is a little quirky but Joel finds himself interested in her as she takes him on a little adventure throughout the day. As this day goes on little things start happen that make no sense to us as the viewer. After that point it shows a bunch of memories that Clem and Joel share together. On Valentine’s Day he shows up at Clem’s job to bring her some things and she has no idea who he is. Joel is very perplexed by this and he doesn’t understand how someone he knows so well has no idea who he is. 

He soon finds out that she had every memory of Joel erased from her mind. He is so extremely hurt by this she is also already seeing another person. He is devastated and he decides to have her erased from his mind because he feels as though it is the better alternative than feeling the way that he does. As he goes through the procedure he finds himself remembering not only the bad things about Clem but the good as well. About half way throughout the procedure he finds himself wanting to no finish the procedure and begins resisting but finds himself being unable to resist because he has no way of moving or talking. All he can do is open his eyes is not enough to get them to stop the procedure. When the people computing the test see that they put him back to sleep and make sure they are targeting the right part of his brain. Since he wants to avoid his memories from being erased he brings Clem in his mind to other memories do that he goes off the map and it’s harder for the personnel to erase those memories. He finds this harder than he thought and finds himself at his first memory of Clem. It was not meeting her on a train it was on a beach and they sneak into a house and because he is really scared he is going to get caught he runs away. But before he leaves he remembers Clem and goes back to say goodbye to her and she tells him to meet her at Montauk.

 After he wakes up we see the same scene we saw at the very beginning of the movie. It brings the movie completely around and the scene we see at the beginning is actually not the first time they meet but the second. It was an unusual technique but the film at the end finally made sense.