Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders

“How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.” I’ve been thinking about this movie. So if you’ve seen it, read ahead. I am a huge fan of the writer Charlie Kaufman, who also wrote Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. He is awesome. One of these days I am going to write him a perfume scented letter, written in perfect cursive on quality CV paper, telling him my inner most secrets and feelings in the hope that he writes them into a disturbing and abstract script called “Procrastination.”. But about Eternal Sunshine... it is easy to get lost in it. The first time I saw it I had absolutely no idea what was going on, one moment Joel is laying on the ice with his new girl Clementine, the next he is driving alongside her screaming “I’M ERASING YOU AND I’M HAPPY, YOU DID IT TO ME FIRST.” It took a while for me to realise that these scenes were actually his memories, the ones being erased. The cue to realise this is the implicative dialogue and the fact that there are cars dropping from the sky, houses falling apart, and faces literally blurred because he can’t remember the details. Fantastic stuff. Anyway after seeing it a couple of times now, I think I have it partially worked out. I’d say a major concept of the story is that it is possibly an inevitability that we meet and have relationships with certain people. Despite the whole concept of ‘chance meeting’ there is still the complex issue of where, when, why and how it is that people meet. We may forget things, but we will still be the same people with the same wants and needs. Early in the film (but late in the timeline of his memory) they both meet on the train, and despite all their evident differences they seem drawn to each other. And then there’s the matter of why they are both on that train, and keep running into each other in different places and glance in silence, such as at the beach and in the cafeteria. Remember the scene where they are in the memory of the house falling apart? Clementine whispers to him “meet me at Montauk” (the beach), perhaps an obvious reason for why they both come to the beach and unknowingly see each other the day after Joel has had this very memory erased. He is waiting for his train for work, like any other day, and just happens to change his mind and jump on the train to the particular beach where he first met Clementine; this would have to be coincidence since his memory of this place was erased. When he arrives at the beach he thinks “why on earth did I come here, it’s the middle of winter” and he is seen looking out to sea with a woman standing in the distance doing the same. This is clearly Clementine. Then he sees her again in the cafeteria and writes in his journal “why do I fall in love with every girl that shows me the slightest bit of attention”. This is all the day after Joel has had his memory of her erased. For some reason when I think about the film I always remember the very last shot, of Joel and Clementine running on the beach, and the shot is skipping or repeating it self. The idea that this will in reality occur many, many times, as they repeatedly and painfully erase each other from memory and ultimately meet again soon after, is kind of evident. And so, Kaufman’s point to all this is realised: Forgetting the past only allows it to repeat itself. I thought I had realised something profound when I started writing this but it’s occurring to me that it is probably all profoundly obvious. DammIT. Anyway, brilliant movie. Kaufman is the man. Mmmmmmmmmm Burger-Time.