Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Movie Review

Starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind deals with the concepts of life, love, and death. Jim Carrey plays Joel Barish, an anti-social office worker who is searching for a soul mate in the mundane world that he lives in. Kate Winslet plays Clementine Kruczynski, a spontaneous, warm, yet troubled girl. The way that this story unfolds does not become clear to the viewer until a certain point in the movie. This major turning point begins the formation of the ideas of death and rebirth in the film.

            Although it is not made clear in the beginning, the audience soon finds out that Joel and Clementine are actually going through memories of their relationship in reverse. Clementine has hired a couple of mad scientists in order to go into her mind and erase all memory of Joel and their love for eachother. Before she hired these scientists, she obviously felt that she was unhappy in the relationship and made the major decision to erase Joel from her memory. When Joel learns of this, he is furious and confused as to how Clementine could go through with such a drastic thing. Clementine feels that the relationship between  both of them is dead after a heated argument. The erasing of her memory is essentially a rebirth in the psychological/spiritual sense. Clementine and Joel find eachother in Clementines memory, and once she remembers some of the best moments of their relationship, she begins to believe that she has made a grave mistake, although it is too late.         

            Joe eventually decides that he will never be happy knowing that Clementine has erased him, so he decides to go through with the procedure himself. I do not want to give everything away, as this is a fantastic film that I believe most people would enjoy, so I will not describe the ending.

 Both of these characters essentially die to eachother, and the love between them dies. The death of love between two people who have once loved eachother greatly, is as serious as any other death. I felt a slight connection to Joel, as I have had a relationship that is no longer. Like Joel, I seem to always remember the better parts of the relationship, while ignoring the major problems. Emotionally and spiritually these characters are connected to eachother, and then become disconnected completely. Disconnecting and losing out on relationships with people that I am close to is a huge fear of mine, although this film seems to give me some hope.