Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I’m just a fucked up girl looking for a peace of mind. You know me, I’m impulsive. I will think you’re boring, but that’s me – Clementine

Focus Entertainment presents:
“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”
Jim Carrey (Joel), Kate Winslet (Clementine), Kirsten Dunst (Mary), Elijah Wood (Patrick), Mark Rufallo (Stan), and Tom Wilkinson (Howard)

A catchy title, isn’t it? It’s actually a clip of a very famous quotation from someone, I don’t remember. Not a typical Hollywood movie. I walked out of the theater deep in thoughts. Just my type of movie. Light enough to be entertaining, but deep enough to make you think.


The human brain works in a very mysterious way. Just like a computer hard drive, certain segments or memories of your life can be deleted, at your request.

Joel, someone who said he is the kind of person who never does things on impulse, while Clementine, on the other hand acts solely on hers. They met, and both were madly in love until on decided she was tired of their relationship.

Clementine had Joel erased from her mind. And out of misery from being a complete stranger to his own girlfriend, Joel decided to take up the same procedure, to erase her from his mind. Only later did he realize that he doesn’t want to face a day not remembering her. That he wants to keep their memories.

Did you ever feel like Joel? Or Clementine? Did you ever wish you could just have a fairy godmother flick her magic wand and erase someone off your memory for good because it just hurts too much? Or even worse yet, out of impulse?

I have. Lots of times.

It hurts too much to bear the fond memories I had with someone I know I’m never gonna be together with, ever again. And it even hurts much more to know that I can do nothing about it.

If I could just have an expert like Howard to remove his memories from my brain, perhaps I’d be free. Born a new person.

But the thing is, even the seemingly flawless and foolproof procedure could go wrong. Somehow, someone can just hold on to that memory. Somehow, even when the memories are lost, the universe makes way for two people to meet, yet again, as complete strangers to finally fall for each other once again. Like Joel and Clementine did.

I’d wished for a lot of things. And one of them is to be able to forget him. So people like Patrick could get through. Well, Patrick did. He swooped in. He fell in love with Clementine the very first time he laid eyes on her, and like young boys, he did just about anything to win her. But Clementine was not half as happy as she was with Joel. Because Patrick was just a wanna-be. A mere copycat.

Joel and Clementine, both fought the process. They both met as strangers and fell in love again. Only a short while until Mary decided to tell each and everyone who has gone through the same procedure, that their memories have been erased. She brought their memories back after knowing that she too once experienced the same experiment. And Joel and Clementine found themselves two strangers madly in love who has a huge history.

Will they ever be happy? It’s up to them to decide.

I watched the movie with my friend. And she said “well, maybe the bottom line is, whatever we do, we cannot erase our memories…”
I agree. The only thing we can do is deal with it, and move on. No matter how hard it is…


As for me?

Recent memories will certainly add more files and perhaps one day, when my brain capacity no longer could store these memories, one by one, less important ones will be replaced. But he will never disappear. And for the most part, he will be stocked in my most hidden folders so that it could not be deleted.


Now I hope this will bring me my own “eternal sunshine”…


"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" - Jiffest
Saturday, 4 Dec 2004 14.30 Graha Bhakti Budaya