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Hi guys it's Debbie and today I'm here to
give a full explanation of a film which
is considered one of the best movies of
the 21st century and that is "Eternal
Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind". This film
is an absolute masterpiece and as this
is just the explanation of its very
intricate plot, I will be doing another
video in which I consider the film as a
whole, so a review video. This video will
be absolutely spoiler packed because I
will be explaining the whole plot so
check out the film before watching this
video. Eternal Sunshine is a love story
with a non-linear plot so the whole film
is cut into different scenes which
belong to different moments in the
characters lives. So we're jumping from one
scene to another, from one moment to
another in the characters lives.
It's quite hard in some points to keep
track of the timeline but Clementine's
hair colour gives us some idea of which moment
we're looking at. The story begins with
Joel (portrayed by Jim Carrey) which wakes
up one morning, but instead of going to work
has this urgent and unexplainable desire
to visit Montauk. So he travels there
by train and meets Clementine (portrayed by
Kate Winslet). They start to talk,
they get on very well together and
they decide to start going out together,
they start dating.
Neither of them know that in their past
they used to be lovers but they both had
their memories of one another erased
completely from their minds. After a
discussion they broke up and Clementine
decided to have her memories of Joel
completely removed from her mind. Joel
discovered that she had had these memories
removed, and decided to undergo the same
medical procedure. Because the pain of
not having her, the pain of her not
recognising him was too strong.
They used to be lovers but now
they're like complete strangers meeting
for the first time. Bare in mind all of
this happened before the beginning of
the film. The film opens with them
meeting on the beach as complete
strangers. All their past as lovers, the
erasing of the memories, their
discussions happened before they met for
the first time on the beach as complete
strangers. Most of the film actually
takes place in Joel's mind
while they are erasing his memories. But
all of this happened before the beginning of the
film, before them meeting on the beach.
The film is based on the idea that a
person, a patient can have some
memories erased from their mind.
If a person is suffering because of the
loss of a loved person, or a pet
or anyway they have some pain
connected to this person, they can have
every single memory connected to this
person erased from their mind. They will
never even remember ever meeting this
person and they won't either remember
having the medical procedure of erasing
done. The erasing procedure happens
through various steps and some of them
are very important for the plot. In the
first step the patient is questioned (and
recorded) regarding the reasons why he or
she wants to have a specific person
removed from their memory. Then the
patient collects every single object that
will trigger a memory of this person.
So personal belongings, presents, diary
entries, pictures... Every single object
that could trigger a memory of that
person has to be collected and taken to
the surgery. The doctors will then scan
the patient's brain while showing them
all the objects one by one. So they will
show the patient a specific object, on
the computer a certain area of the brain
will be stimulated and they will do
this for every different object, seeing the
different highlighted areas of the brain.
At the end they will be able to draw
what they call a map of the brain, so a
map of the memories of this person in
the brain, so which parts of the brain
are connected to this person. After that
the patient is sedated and the doctors
are able to follow the map they created
and erase these memories one by one. The
patient will wake up and won't
remember anything about the procedure or
about the person they're trying to
erase. Because the procedure will be
carried out at the patient's home and
the doctors will leave just before the
morning, before the patient wakes up. The
patient's closest friends or family
members will receive a note asking them
to not disclose any information about
the procedure or about the person the
patient's been trying to erase. The film
shows how Joel has his memory erased,
remember before that opening scene. During
the procedure
Joel couldn't move or wake up obviously
but he could feel that the procedure was
going on and he could sort of visually
picture it in his dreams.
So you know for example when we get a
stimulation from the outside while
we're dreaming, for example we are
very cold or we feel a sudden movement,
we tend to see that stimulation
in the dream. He can actually visually
see it happening because he will see
shop-windows become completely black and writings
becoming blank. So Joel feels the
procedure going on and as the doctors
pass from one memory to another, so they
follow the map, following the memories he
has of Clementine, he starts to live these
memories once again in his dreams. And at
the beginning a lot of the
memories are them having discussions,
of them getting into fights, of them
splitting up but as he steps from one
memory to another he starts to see the
nice memories they had together. And
he understands he doesn't want to have
this procedure carried out, he wants
to keep some of these nice memories he
has of her. During the procedure Joel
can manage to hear what the doctors are
saying and so he hears one of the doctors
confessing to the fact that he is now
dating Clementine and what he's doing,
he is
impersonating Joel. Because Clementine
completely forgot about Joel but she
liked how he used to be. So he is
using all the presents he didn't give her,
he's using all his catchphrases, he's
using everything Joel did to make Clementine
fall in love with him. So this
obviously makes Joel understand that he has
to wake up and stop this procedure as
soon as possible.
He tries to scream at the top of his
lungs, asking the doctors to stop the
procedure but it is a dream so he can't
obviously manage to interact with the
doctors. He meets Clementine in his
subconscious and decides to hide in some
parts of his unconscious that the
doctors can't find on the map. So he decides
to bring Clementine off of the memories
he has on the map and bring her into
some different memories, memories the
doctors don't have on their map. So he bring her
for example into his childhood. The doctors
complete lose him on the map, they don't
know where he is because he's keeping
her hidden let's say in another part of
his subconscious. Unfortunately the
doctors manage to complete the erasing
process. Just before waking up though
Joel meets Clementine in his dreams
and she whispers into his ear asking
him to meet her in Montauk and then
Joel wakes up.
Joel wakes up and it's
the beginning of the film, the procedure's
over, he can't remember anything of
Clementine, anything of the procedure
ever actually happening. He starts to go
to work but when he's at the train
station he suddenly has that urge, that
desire that I was saying at the beginning of
the video, to travel to Montauk. He
doesn't remember what happened in the
dream but he has this memory of wanting to go
to Montauk for some reason. And as a
matter of fact he meets Clementine. So
we're at the beginning of the film when
they both meet on the beach and they are
complete strangers. So as we said they
start dating again because they do have
things in common, they like each
other. They just can't remember that all
of the erasing happened they can't
remember that they used to be lovers. One of
the secretaries at the surgery that performs
this erasing discovers that an erasing
process had been
carried out on her. As a revenge she mails
all the patients of that surgery their
personal files, including the recording
of the first interview they do with the
doctors, when they state all the reasons
why they want to have a person removed
from their memory.
Both Joel and Clementine receive
these documents, they receive the
recordings and they discover that they had
erased each other from their minds. They
decide to keep on going out together,
they decide to keep on dating.
Because although as Clementine correctly
points out, if they decided to erase
these memories, if they decided to split
up there are some reasons, mistakes
they'll probably fall back into. But they
decide to keep on dating anyway because
they can learn from these mistakes. Will
they fall in love like they did the
first time or will they fall back into
the old patterns? Let me know with a
comment here below and I'll see you soon in a
new video, bye!