ShaunHuston
Posts 26
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7/10/2007 2:27 PM
posted awhile ago
Memory and identity in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
A film that engages me philosophically is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). It is a movie that seems, ultimately, to be a meditation on memory and identity, and one that represents both in interesting and challenging ways.
To me, Eternal Sunshine conceptualizes memory in spatial terms, both in the sense that memories are seen as being tied to places in the exterior world – Montauk, the Charles – and that they are located in different parts of our brain. Lacuna Inc's procedure is predicated on the idea of mapping, and this is extended to Joel's (Jim Carrey) “movement” between his memories, especially when seeking new “places” to stash Clementine (Kate Winslett). The connection between our interior and exterior geographies seems to present one of the central flaws in Lacuna's erasure service because our memories of places are larger than our memories of individual people. This would help to explain how Clementine and Joel both end up back at Montauk after their procedures and why Clementine is so unsettled by Patrick's (Elijah Wood) mimicking of Joel on the Charles.
What makes this geographic conception of memory interesting is that I think we most commonly conceive of memory as a matter of time, rather than place or space, as in “remember when” or “memory fades,” but Eternal Sunshine seems to be suggesting that we can also think of memory in terms of “remember where” or “memory grows distant” in ways that are explicitly spatial and not just as metaphors for the passage of time.
The Lacuna procedure is also rooted in the contention that memories, and who we are to each other, which raises the question of identity, are bound up in things – photos, gifts, items that have some particular connection to someone else. This challenges the tendency towards thinking about ourselves as coming from somewhere deep inside, as in “I should be true to myself,” a sentiment that suggests that my exterior life – the clothes I wear, how I cut and color my hair – can be judged according to how closely it matches my real self, which comes from inside me. I think that Eternal Sunshine can be read as implying that our identities are actually the product of interrelationships between people and things, and not simply the product of our individual interior selves coming to the surface. The impossibility of entirely removing the material evidence of others becomes another subtle flaw in Lacuna's system of memory erasure.
Interestingly I think that Joel and Clementine's repeated attraction to each other can be read as either affirming an interior view of identity or moving in the direction of a more outward-looking or exterior view. If they reunite because of fate, that implies a more interior view of the self, as in who we are and what we do is somehow inevitable because we are who we are that can never change. If they reunite because, say, they both love Montauk, or because Joel, upon “first meeting,” will always see Clementine as someone who can introduce a wildness into his life and Clementine will see Joel as introducing sensitivity into hers, that implies a more outwardlooking view (these kinds of judgments necessarily being based on what we make of how people look, sound, carry themselves).
Three other movies that come to mind in this realm of identity and memory are Vertigo, Memento, and The Lookout.
Beyond noting that the title comes from the Alexander Pope quote cited in the film, I don't know much about what, if any, scientific or philosophical sources informed Charlie Kaufman's script for Eternal Sunshine.
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ShaunHuston
Posts 26
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7/11/2007 12:22 PM
posted awhile ago
Re: Memory and identity in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
The Lookout was written and directed by Scott Frank, who also wrote the adaptations for Get Shorty, Out of Sight, and Minority Report. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Chris Pratt, a former high school hotshot hockey player who suffered a head injury in a car crash that also resulted in the death and dismemberment of three of his friends. His injury requires him to keep notes everywhere to remind himself to do even basic things like turn out the light. As part of his therapy he is also required to keep a daily diary. He works as a janitor at a bank in a small town and gets marked by a group of would-be thieves to be the inside man on a robbery. I related it to the other films in the original post because Chris is constantly struggling with who is and who he was. The notes and diaries he keeps function to mediate that struggle - how much of who he is is contained within these little texts and how much is who is independent of those notes, etc. Beyond these philosophical questions, it's a well made and acted film, with really fine supporting performances from Jeff Daniels, as Chris's blind roommate, Matthew Goode as the ringleader of the thieves, and Isla Fisher as the femme fatale who ropes Chris into the scheme (Sergio Di Zio also has a small, pivotal part, as "Deputy Ted"). Frank understands the heist/caper genre well and it shows in the careful construction of the plot. Well worth watching.
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