Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind: A Cure for the Ghosted

When my boyfriend ghost­ed me out of a two-year rela­tion­ship, I blamed Michel Gondry. I know that it was unfair and inad­mis­si­ble of me to pin it on a film­mak­er I had nev­er met, but if it wasn’t for Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind, I wouldn’t have had the recur­ring fan­ta­sy of eras­ing my ex from my mem­o­ry. (Per­haps I was also des­per­ate to scape­goat anoth­er French­man while my head was catch­ing up with my heart in the after­math of his disappearance.)

“Today is a hol­i­day invent­ed by greet­ing card com­pa­nies to make peo­ple feel like crap,” declares Joel (Jim Car­rey) in a voiceover at the begin­ning of Eter­nal Sun­shine. His vendet­ta against Valentine’s Day seems per­fect­ly rea­son­able, but there is a sour taste to his words, the whole mono­logue doused with bit­ter­ness and mis­di­rect­ed nos­tal­gia. For a first-time view­er, the film’s open­ing sets a tone of melan­choly as blue as the Mon­tauk beach in win­ter­time, but if you are rewatch­ing it – as I was, in the com­pa­ny of my 50 unan­swered calls – you’ll more like­ly feel the near­by warmth ema­nat­ing from a cer­tain orange sweat­shirt and the girl wear­ing it. Joel meets Clemen­tine (Kate Winslet) then and there, for what they both think is the first time, but over the course of the film we learn that, in fact, they had been a cou­ple for near­ly two years until very recently.

It is on Valentine’s Day that Joel finds out that Clemen­tine doesn’t remem­ber him at all; what’s more, she had a pro­ce­dure done to ter­mi­nal­ly remove all traces of their time togeth­er. What the med­ical com­pa­ny Lacu­na Inc offers in Eter­nal Sun­shine is a man-made mir­a­cle, using neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and some soft­ware to relieve one of a loss (a rela­tion­ship) by replac­ing it with anoth­er (mem­o­ries). Giv­en this paradox’s obvi­ous appeal, it’s no won­der there’s an end­less string of peo­ple lin­ing up to use the ser­vice. For­get the pain, for­get the source – what bet­ter sell­ing point to help peo­ple get over their exes and move on? But the film makes it clear that such era­sure is a deeply ego­is­tic act, since it leaves the oth­er part­ner to bear all the load alone.

While before, I would have empathised with Clem through and through (the hair colours, the volatil­i­ty, the yap­ping), this time I felt every ounce of Joel’s pain. Being ghost­ed by the per­son I was plan­ning to spend my life with felt like receiv­ing an advi­so­ry Lacu­na Inc card with the neat mes­sage: ​“X has had Y erased from their mem­o­ry. Please nev­er men­tion their rela­tion­ship to them again. Thank you.” Gondry got the idea for such a card from con­cep­tu­al artist Pierre Bis­muth, and brought it to screen­writer Char­lie Kauf­man in 1998. It became the start­ing point of the script that would end up becom­ing Eter­nal Sun­shine years later.

The two had already col­lab­o­rat­ed on the French director’s first fea­ture, Human Nature, and Kafu­man was a name thanks to his work on Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich and Adap­ta­tion, so they shared a predilec­tion for fan­tas­ti­cal sto­ry­telling. While the pro­ce­dure offered by Lacu­na Inc goes beyond any kind of real­ism, the sci-fi ele­ment was nev­er the real defin­ing fea­ture of Kaufman’s work in the first place. Nev­er­the­less, when it comes to Gondry’s film, fan­ta­sy becomes a tool for Joel’s intro­spec­tion rather than his wish-ful­fil­ment. When Joel decid­ed to wipe out Clemen­tine just as she had erased him, I recog­nised in his child­ish resent­ment a thirst for jus­tice that was as vio­lent as it was disturbing.

Jim Carrey’s dim­pled smile is per­haps the only thing one recog­nis­es from the actor’s comedic roles in Eter­nal Sun­shine; here he is a muf­fled, mono­syl­lab­ic shy man who opens up like a flower when Clementine’s around. No won­der the love sto­ry they share is in turn roman­tic, expan­sive, and explo­sive (thank you YouTu­ber ther­a­pist for a suc­cinct analy­sis), but what ele­vat­ed Eter­nal Sun­shine to the point of audio-visu­al rem­e­dy in my eyes was how tex­tured the object of affec­tion was, regard­less of whether it was Clemen­tine or Joel’s mem­o­ry ver­sion of her.

Winslet is effu­sive, quip­py, and often infan­tile in her desire to con­nect; far from her ​“Eng­lish rose” peri­od dra­ma type­cast, she keeps Clem at a dis­tance from the man­ic pix­ie dream­girl arche­type – even when she comes real­ly close, as in the ​“Too many guys think I’m a con­cept” speech she gives towards the end. Even Joel him­self is tak­en aback by the Clemen­tine he remem­bers: a tan­gle of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and yearn­ing teth­ered to a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion. In one mem­o­ry, she shoots him a poi­so­nous look over din­ner; in anoth­er, their pil­low talk makes him want to stop the pro­ce­dure altogether.

As Joel’s vin­dic­tive screams – ​“I’m eras­ing you and I’m hap­py!” – sig­nal a moment when one nar­ra­tive lay­er (wak­ing life) folds into anoth­er (dream, pro­ce­dure, mem­o­ries), we get a glimpse of what era­sure looks like. Self­ish­ly, I thought: This must be what it is like inside the mind of some­one who would rather van­ish with­out a trace instead of break­ing up with you. Every time Clemen­tine dis­ap­pears from a scene as it unfolds, what’s trau­mat­ic about it is how seam­less it is. Gondry and his team relied almost entire­ly on prac­ti­cal effects, with very lit­tle VFX and edit­ing tricks. Yes, the occa­sion­al dou­ble expo­sure and fade tran­si­tions between two frames make Clem van­ish, but the most mem­o­rable scenes were long takes with com­plex chore­o­gra­phies for Car­rey, Winslet, and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ellen Kuras. In-cam­era effects or some­thing as sim­ple as pan­ning away to pan back when the char­ac­ter is gone, make Joel’s grad­ual loss of Clemen­tine a tac­tile, bit­ter­sweet expe­ri­ence for the audi­ence as well. For him, it became unbear­able; for me, it was soothing.

Of course, it hurts to bear wit­ness to this couple’s rad­i­cal (yet non-con­sen­su­al) break-up, but while Joel was there fight­ing tooth and nail to keep a mem­o­ry of Clemen­tine intact, I noticed my own ani­mos­i­ty was fad­ing. Per­haps a part of it will always nest in the deep shad­ows that were once the cloud-print pil­low, between the aisles of Barnes and Noble (Clem’s work­place), or the frozen Charles Riv­er where Joel admits he was so hap­py he could ​“die right now.” The rela­tion­ship between cin­e­ma and rep­re­sen­ta­tion is nev­er straight­for­ward and sim­ple, even when it feels lib­er­at­ing, but take it from me: the movie-mag­ic of Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind can make the ghost­ed come back to life.