Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

If I could, what memories would I erase?

Would it be something from my childhood? An unpleasant set of pictures of myself in a dark corner of my Bandung bedroom? Would it be one friend who betrayed our friendship? Would it be all about someone I met years ago, who gave me some (emotional) bruises at the end of our relationship? Or would it be someone who always give me real laughters yet also sad tears?

Our memories store some unpleasant echoes of failure and betrayal. These can make us unhappy; some people want to forget these memories and move with their lives. So, wouldn't it be great if we can have some selective unwanted memories erased?

In the movie I just finished watching, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you can have that option. Dr. Howard Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson) and his staff (Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, and Elijah Wood), with their company Lacuna, offer this service by performing a certain 'brain surgery' procedure. And the story begins when Joel (Jim Carey) is going through this procedure after he finds out that her girl-friend, Clementine (Kate Winslet), has her memories of Joel erased.

As you can guess, like all other movies with techno-science theme, this movie too dwell on the technological failure. So it goes, procedure of having Joel's memories of Clementine removed is a failure and this is really the core of the whole story.

I'm not gonna tell how the story goes and how it ends. You better watch it by yourself. While I don't think it's a 5-stars movie, I really think it is a very interesting movie. I like the way it presents technological breakthrough stuff as channel to metaphorically pose a deeper dilemma: would we be better off or not by erasing heartbreak from our lives. Charlie Kaufmann (a writer) did a great job in presenting this dilemma in a smart framework of pyschological adventures . The plot is clever. The story is poignant. And of course the actors did so well.

I love some scenes–visual collage–of erasure moments where tangible artifacts are rumbling off as the memories are gradually removed. It is not a new idea, but still, it works well in this movie.

Much I can say about this movie. On the top of it, for me this movie is a reminder that true happiness has no easy answers. It is not merely about a gigantic collection of good and beautiful memories.