Welcome to the second part of my Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind article, in which I’ll take a closer look at the world of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In this second part, I will be focusing on Clementine and Joel’s subconscious connection, which continues to bring them together. Like in the last article, there will be spoilers ahead; you have been warned!
Joel and Clementine’s Subconscious Connection
Joel:
When we first see Joel observing his past self, we are all confused about what exactly is going on. That is, until Joel begins to realize he is having his memory erased. One of the first memories that is erased is Joel’s meeting with Dr. Howard, who is in charge of Lacuna, Inc., the memory-erasing company. This is because Clementine is associated with his reason for undergoing the procedure, and every trace of her has to be erased.
Because Joel’s memories are being erased in reverse chronological order (from the end of his relationship with Clementine to the very beginning of their relationship), when Joel realizes his memories of her are being wiped, he feels no guilt, as he is being brought back to their relationship’s bad ending; he states, “I’m erasing you, and I’m happy.” Of course, as he arrives at their sweeter moments together, the ones with Clem’s red hair, he begins to regret his decision to go through with the procedure. He regrets it so much that he pushes himself to gain consciousness during his brain erasing procedure, which he actually achieves by opening his eyes twice, mid-brain procedure! However, when that unfortunately doesn’t work, red-haired Clem and Joel resort to “hiding” her somewhere she “doesn’t belong,” with Joel transporting himself and Clem to his childhood memories. Since this would be a place she doesn’t belong, this is pre-Clementine.
Fortunately, this works for some time, as his eraser, Stan, quickly loses him, forcing him to call Dr. Howard to help him locate Joel and Clementine. It is during this time that, with difficulty, Dr. Howard is able to locate him and erase Clementine.
This doesn’t stop the pair from quickly getting lost again, as Clementine tells Joel, “Hide me…somewhere really buried, hide me in your humiliation.” While I won’t go into detail as to where Joel takes Clem, he takes her to two of his most suppressed memories, one of which is flat out embarrassing and the other heartbreaking (like this movie). However, this just shows you how in love and dedicated Joel is to Clem; by finding a way to resist the procedure while unconscious and conjuring up such embarrassing and disheartening memories, he proves his passion. He is so set on not losing her that he remembers all of this, trying to fight back by hiding her in his deepest memories, which are ones that he probably thinks about from time to time, cringing and wishing to forget them.
Once again, Dr. Howard is able to find them and continue the procedure. Eventually, we reach the “end” of this procedure, and we get to the memory in which Clem and Joel first officially meet each other. We see Joel simply reliving the memory and recalling everything that happened that day, from describing Clem’s green hair and orange jacket to the first impression Clem made on him.
Something to note during this scene is that, in the present day, when Clem and Joel meet, Clem warns him not to make any jokes about her name, to which Joel responds that he wouldn’t know any. However, as he relives his actual first meeting with Clem, he knows the jokes associated with Clementine’s name. This shows just how much the erasers took from Joel; they not only stole his memories of Clem, but they also removed certain memories from his childhood when he attempted to hide Clem in them (at least that is my theory).
Ultimately, Joel accepts that he can’t do anything to keep the erasers from taking Clem away from him. As green-haired Clem tells him,
“This is it, Joel. It’s gonna be gone soon… what do we do?”
To which Joel simply responds, “Enjoy it.”
As the end comes, one of the last things Clem tells Joel before his procedure is over is, “Meet me in Montauk,” and with that, we are back at the start of the movie, with the sound of the eraser’s truck leaving outside his window and the beginning soundtrack playing. However, we now have much more clarity on what this story is about.
Now, whether it was because of what Clem said to Joel in their last moments, something new (not within that last memory), or because Joel had a vague recollection of the memory, like when you wake up with the last few details of a dream still imprinted on your mind (due to waking up from REM sleep), which you slowly forget but retain the overall “idea” of what that dream was about, all in all, we know that Joel’s subconscious still had Clem in it, which was what led him to her in Montauk. Clem, too, experiences the strong connection, which we will discuss next.
Clem:
One of my favorite things about this film is that it not only focuses on Joel, but it also follows Clem. While Joel is struggling to resist his procedure, we are brought to blue-haired Clem, and we see how she is doing after having had the same procedure as Joel. We find her in a manic state, questioning her reality as she paces, saying she’s lost and scared and that “nothing makes any sense.” This hints at the idea that, as Joel is tied to her, she, too, is tied to him through her subconscious, despite having gone through the procedure a few days before. The difference, however, is that Clementine gets a little more assistance in this area.
As you may recall, we learn that Joel’s last diary entry was “two years ago,” which is because he ripped out all of the pages that were about Clem and all of those associated with her in preparation for his procedure.
The same thing went for Clem: she had to get rid of everything associated with Joel. While successful, this sort of backfires on her when she starts a new relationship with a guy named Patrick, who happens to be one of the guys who assisted with both Clementine’s and Joel’s erasing procedures. In the film, during the initial start of Joel’s procedure, Patrick confesses to Stan that he “fell in love” with Clementine while they were erasing her memories of Joel. This leads him to pursue a relationship with her, not as himself but as Joel. When Joel left his Clementine stuff at Lacuna, Patrick stole his stuff and pretended to act like Joel with Clementine, calling her “Tangerine” like Joel used to and repeating previous phrases Joe would say, which triggers her subconscious. This is most evident when Clem agrees to go to the frozen lake with Patrick to calm herself after her breakdown, which is when he says a line Joel first used when red-haired Clem first took him to the lake: “I could die right now, Clem. I’m just happy…I’m just exactly where I want to be.” To which, instead of responding to him like she had with Joel, she gets up and says she wants to go home.
Now, the whole purpose of this procedure is to forget the person you wish to erase from your memory. To avoid any confusion or panic, like Clem experiences, patients are required to give up all items that have any emotional connection or association to the person they are erasing. Additionally, those close to the patients (ex., family and friends) receive notification cards that read “(X person) has had (Y person) erased from (their) memory. Please never mention their relationship to (them) again.”
Patrick triggers Clementine’s subconscious, driving her to a manic state. While we don’t get a clear explanation as to why Clem decides to go to the beach, we can infer that, like Joel, her subconscious leads her to the beach, as they are both tied to it.
Eternal Sunshine of the spotless Mind Review Part 3
I hope you enjoyed this second article, and I hope you join me in the last part of this series, where I will discuss the movie’s overall meaning and share my thoughts and interpretations of what’s to come for our troubled love interests.