Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The film that finally made me revamp this section to include everything that I find fun instead of games. What really drew me into writing about it and thinking I have something, is what I thought to myself in the first minute or two of the movie. Which was: “This Joel person and this Clementine person have met before. I think the plot here is that even after erasure, their internal feelings led them to Montauk Beach, as they were fated lovers”. I was right, or at least somewhat correct, which gave me some confidence to keep going down this path. The main things I am writing about for this review are the two main characters, Joel and Clementine.

Joel Barish and His Journal

Joel Barish is a complicated character to write; truly introspective characters are probably insanely hard to write, but I don’t think that was the case for Joel Barish. He, to me, represents the living contradiction of seemingly “rational” people. Joel interprets himself through the “I” without realizing it speaks to his self-conception as someone who believes he is objective, when in reality, he is deeply subjective but unaware of it.

The key point being we as spectators have a direct vantage point to this like rationalizing why he went to Montauk, assuming Clementine “screwing” other people, and most importantly the journal. The journal as a narrative device was a key tool to illustrate Joel as a character. Because; just as Clementine’s visceral reactions protrude outwards, Joel’s recedes inwards. In order to then demonstrate that to the audience, you need a sort of reflective device, which is found in the journal.

However, I want to drive the claim that this journal and Joel’s interaction with it isn’t “real introspection”. It simply acts as an eye or ear for these visceral reactions. That is, he sees and interprets an image of himself, the world, and others, but never seems to understand the agency doing so, and he ends up constructing the world he lives in from that angle. He records his emotions and perceptions, but rather than using them to understand himself, he passively constructs his reality through them ¹.

Joel Barish assumes his reserved, cautious nature is just “who he is,” without questioning how much of that is a construct or a defense mechanism. His hesitancy, over-analysis, and repression suggest that he sees himself as a stable, rational individual. Yet, his actions—such as impulsively undergoing the memory erasure procedure—contradict that self-image. The journal, then, serves as a mirror, but a flawed one—it doesn’t offer self-awareness, only self-reinforcement.

The excitement for myself as a viewer then is to actually see how this flip of perspective changes throughout the storyline, especially during the segment where he begins to realize he does not want to forget Clemetine. But, also a bit of that for me is pondering how you would write an introspective character. Would that lead to a lot of breaking the fourth wall? I mean, it seems hard to make introspection cinematic without putting that introspection into the minds of its audience, if that makes sense.

Clementine

Clementine is the monkey wrench to Joel’s world, the opposite that attracts, the antithesis of his philosophical systems, which somehow works all to well to draw the miser of a person Joel is, into eternal sunshine. She refuses to rationalize and instead relies wholly on her visceral emotions, which leads to spontaneous events as seen in her out-of-the-blue desires to go out to the lake or even talk to Joel.

What’s interesting is that, despite being his opposite, she’s not just some manic-pixie-dream-girl designed to fix him. Their relationship is more complex—Clementine’s impulsivity isn’t a perfect antidote to Joel’s restraint, just as his caution doesn’t necessarily ground her in a healthy way. Instead, their attraction comes from the friction between their ways of being, even as that friction inevitably leads to collapse.

The existence of this friction is why I came to the conclusion that the ending of the film isn’t necessarily happy. The 3 loops at the end signify the 3 years of their relationship, which again fades to black. Love is a radical affirmation that Joel can’t do because it involves accepting his emotions, and one that Clemetine can’t do because it involves recognizing her agency.

1. rationalization dne introspection, you’re in your head but you don’t “see” yourself. similar to sarte’s bad faith. ↩