Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned."
—Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, as quoted by Mary Svevo.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a 2004 science fiction drama/comedy, directed by Michel Gondry, written by Charlie Kaufman and starring Jim Carrey in one of his more serious roles. The film primarily follows Joel Barish, a recently dumped man who discovers that his ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has undergone a memory wiping procedure in order to forget their relationship together. In an act of spite, he opts to undergo the same procedure. What follows is a rather surreal journey through his memories, as he re-experiences their entire relationship. It doesn't take long for him to realize he'd rather not forget his experiences...

The result is a film that's both funny and poignant, to the point where it won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.

Tropes used in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind include:
  • Amnesiac Lover: Clementine, and later Joel as well.
    • Mary for Dr. Mierzwiak.
  • Anachronic Order: The film opens with Joel and Clementine meeting after having the procedure performed, though this isn't immediately apparent. A lot of the memories revisited during the erasure procedure are visited out of order, particularly when Joel starts fighting back in response; as a linear series of events, the good in Joel and Clementine's relationship is slowly extinguished and forgotten (providing the original motivation for the procedures in the first place).
  • And I Must Scream: It's not that the doctor won't stop... it's just that Joel can't tell him to.
    • This especially applies when Joel "wills" himself conscious long enough to look at the assistants with desperation in his eyes (but cannot speak) as they drug him back to sleep.
  • Beta Couple: Mary and Dr. Mierzwiak.
  • The Blank: faces in partially-erased memories.
  • Bottle Fairy: Clementine and Mary often get "amiably drunk" (the latter even smokes pot).
  • Brain Bleach: Deconstructed Trope through Lacuna Inc's memory wipe procedure, which arguably makes up most of the plot.
  • Caught with Your Pants Down: One of Joel's humiliating memories is his mother catching him masturbating to furry porn as a teen.
  • Dead Person Impersonation: A variant - Patrick uses materials Joel dumped off (including lines Joel said and gifts bought but never given) to woo Clementine - while the original person isn't dead, the memories are, and Patrick attempts to use that to his advantage. This clearly creeps Clem out - it's one of the hints that Clem may have also resisted the procedure in the end.
  • Dead Sparks: Where Joel and Clementine's first relationship ends (starts?).
  • Deconstruction: The film deconstructs the romantic comedy genre simply by showing the events of the weeks after Joel and Clementine fall in love.
    • Even more than that, the Anachronic Order we see things in is the normal order of a Romantic Comedy: first the fight, then they fall in love. We see it in that order, but really it's the reverse order as they fell out of love.
  • Double Take: Clem makes a one just after receives one of Joel's gifts from Patrick. See Dead Person Impersonation above.
  • Dude, She's Like, in a Coma: Stan says this almost verbatim to Patrick after he tells him he stole a pair of Clem's panties. There's an awkward silence before they both break out laughing.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: Joel and Clementine are back together. Will it work out this time, or will history just repeat itself? Neither one knows, but that's not going to stop them from trying.
  • Genre Busting: A Science fiction romantic comedy most of which takes place inside the main characters head.
  • Ironic Echo: "I'll be sure to remember that." * memory erased*
  • Kaleidoscope Hair: Clementine frequently re-dues her hair.
  • Kick the Dog: Deleted scenes reveal that not only did Howard convince Mary to erase her memories of their relationship, he also had her get an abortion earlier.
    • Not just deleted scenes. It's very brief, but in the portion of Mary's tape that we hear in the unextended version, Howard says "remember, we agreed. This is the best way." The implication is already there that he was clearly pressuring her into going through with the memory wipe.
      • This being after he specifically told her earlier that she had personally wanted the procedure.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Well, computer guided really...
  • Literary Allusion Title
  • Lost Love Montage: Plot justified, with the memory-erasing procedure causing Joel to relive his memories of Clementine and realize why he fell in love with her in the first place. As part of the Deconstruction, some downright bitter memories appear as well.
  • Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Clementine. Lampshaded ("I'm not a concept, Joel. I'm just a fucked-up girl looking for my own peace of mind"), and a Deconstruction insofar as it shows what happens once the novelty of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl wears off and the meaning of the words becomes apparent.
    • It also subverts a common element of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, in that it is usually inexplicable that the free-spirited girl would be so interested in the quiet, reserved guy. At the beginning of the movie it seems like Clementine is fascinated by Joel for no reason, but it's actually that her subconscious is influencing her with the forgotten remnants of her feelings for him when they were together. When we see their real first meeting, she is interested in him initially but quickly gets bored, forcing him to work to make a relationship happen.
  • Maybe Ever After: The ending.
  • Meaningful Name: Clementine - which means "merciful." "Oh my darlin' Clementine... You are lost and gone forever..."
    • The fruit may have been part of what led them to make her dye her hair orange, and also informed Joel's nickname for her.
    • "Lacuna" is a gap, blank, or missing piece; in Italian, it also refers to a memory lapse.
  • Memory-Wiping Crew
  • Mind Screw: The memory erasing procedure is this both for the characters and for the audience.
  • Modesty Bedsheet
  • Ms. Fanservice: Kate Winslet and Kirsten Dunst get many nice underwear shots.
  • Never Heard That One Before: One of the first things Clementine asks Joel not to do is make jokes about her name. He immediately starts singing "Oh My Darlin', Clementine".
    • Inverted in the beginning actually after the procedure was completed where Joel has no memory of the song since it was deleted as part of the process of removing all traces of Clem from his memory. Clementine ends up reciting the whole thing herself.
  • Once More, with Clarity: The scenes of Joel meeting Clementine on Montauk at the beginning are repeated later, at which point it's clear that they're meeting for the second time, but neither one is aware of it. Even the sound of a van driving away outside as Joel wakes up turns out to be the Lacuna, Inc. van.
  • Perma-Stubble: Joel sports a non-manly variation thereof.
  • The Reveal: Mary already had an affair with Dr. Mierzwiak before the film started, then opted to have her memory wiped of the ordeal. The fact that the film sets this up to happen again is in keeping with the theme that You Can't Fight Fate where love is concerned.
    • Not to mention that Joel and Clementine's "initial" meeting in Montauk is in fact the second time they've met. Probably qualifies as a First Episode Spoiler.
  • Screw Destiny: Joel manages to implant the suggestion to go back to Montauk despite the memory rewrite - and Clementine's appearance on the same train suggests that she may have done the same.
    • Knowing Clementine, she has been going to Montauk every day in an effort to recreate the first meeting, which goes some way to explaining why a lot of "present day" Clem behavior is filled with Wangst: each time he doesn't show up it drives her crazy, but because of the procedure she can't quite say why, especially not to Patrick... babyboy.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The movie itself is ambiguous (or at least balanced) on this, but it does seem to be fairly effective at revealing where viewers are on the scale.
  • Third-Person Flashback: Possible aversion as we see the movie as a third person memory of the protagonist's dreams. In real life he has no memory of his romantic rival's face because he didn't see it, so even though we see it in third person, no matter how he moves the guy he's always The Blank.
  • Title Drop: The page quote.
  • Transferable Memory: Averted.

Joel: Is there any chance of... brain damage?
Dr. Mierzwiak: Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage.

  • Unreliable Narrator: Joel. A great portion of the film is told through Joel's memories of events he experienced with Clementine, but the unreliability of those memories is shown on at least two occasions. When Joel first arrives home the night of the erasure, his neighbor chats with him about Valentine's Day. This is then the first substantial memory about Clementine that gets erased. But while this event took place just a short while (maybe an hour at most) before the erasure, it is shown that Joel is already incorrectly remembering what his neighbor said to him. Other less obvious hints abound (e.g. Joel remembering childhood events while being adult in appearance). Taking the imperfection of human memory alongside whether Joel considered a given memory as enjoyable or upsetting, the audience ought to wonder if what they're viewing is what actually happened, or if Joel's memories are distorted, exaggerated, or embellished because of the passing of time and because of his emotional state at the time of the event.
    • This troper always believed that when you see Joel as an adult (when he's in a childhood memory), that represents the adult Joel interacting with the memory. This is why he can talk about wanting his mother's attention and then turn to Clementine and articulate his feelings in adult terms. When you see Joel as a kid, that's not Joel reliving the memory as much as simply remembering it.
  • Wham! Line:

Hollis: Don't be a monster, Howard. Tell the poor girl. You can have him. You did.

  • Where Were You Last Night?: The last time Joel saw Clementine before she had him erased was when she stumbled in the door at 3 A.M. after drunkenly scraping his car against a fire hydrant. The fight coming from Joel's reaction was Clementine's impetus to the procedure.
  • Women Are Wiser: Inverted: as Clementine's Manic Pixie Dream Girl status is deconstructed, Joel goes from being simply Comically Serious to being the closer-to-Earth counter to Clementine's bare recklessness.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: Clementine and Joel show signs that they would have gotten back together even hadn't Mary opted to break the rules and mail them back all of the materials required for the procedure.
    • Also, Mary ends up falling for Dr. Mierzwiak again despite getting a memory wipe to remove even any memory of why she'd fall for him in the first place. Mary is alarmed by this as Dr. Mierzwiak is a married man, and likely would have renewed the affair if his wife hadn't caught them kissing in Joel's house. This takes on an even darker tone in the extended scene of her memory tape, which reveals that one of the memories suppressed was of an abortion she had been pressured into.
      • Part of Mary's alarm (and fury) later may come from the fact that while she had the affair wiped from her memory, Dr. Mierzwiak quite clearly didn't - he wouldn't be able to tell her that they had a "history", otherwise. And he knew all the things that had made her fall in love with him the first time...and he may even have been doing the same thing as Patrick, playing on the forgotten memories to spark a relationship. There's probably a special hell for that.
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