Lost Memory In Casablanca

Numerous films from this semester demonstrate characters that desire to overcome their past but it is especially evident in Casablanca, Citizen Kane and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Whether it is Rick, who spurns all emotions as a defense mechanism, Kane, who unknowingly tries to compensate for his lost childhood, or Joel who wishes to erase the memories of his painful relationship, all films demonstrate the tragic effects of lost love and how these memories affect the lives of the protagonists.
In Casablanca, the viewer sees how Isla and Rick originally met in Paris and it was love at first sight. They were full of adventures and did not have a care in the world. Isla and Rick where so in love they planned to flee Paris together

after the Nazis’ invasion. However, Ilsa stands Rick up at the train station which causes Rick to become the numb man he is in the beginning of the film.
Unexpectedly, years later, Ilsa and her husband enter Rick's Café Américain in Casablanca.

Ilsa asks Sam, the piano man, to play she and Rick’s song from Paris and utters “play it once, Sam, for old time’s sake.” Rick comes marching down from his office angrily telling Sam “I thought I told you never to play…” and his eyes meet Ilsa’s for the first time in years. Seeing Ilsa and hearing their song being played causes Rick to relive the memories of their joy and they briefly reconnect. However, Rick is once again thwarted and relives the painful memories of their past. Rick is seen sitting in his empty nightclub after hours, depressed, smoking and downing bourbon. He tells Sam, "She's coming back, I know she's coming back." Distressed over the heartbreaking memories being reactivated, Rick beat his fist on the table, reexperiencing the rejection of Ilsa abandoning

him.
Another example of a man trying to escape his past is the protagonist in Citizen Kane. This film tells the story of Kane, a man who suppresses his memories of a tragic childhood and tries to compensate for his lack of familial development as a child, with wealth, objects and control. However, the objects he surrounds himself with cannot fill the void and sadly, Kane ends of dying, alone, surrounded by only his statues as a replacement for the people in his life. Unfortunately, it isn’t until his deathbed that Kane confronts the memories of his past, and speaks the word “Rosebud,” which represents a time of unconditional love and acceptance.
Kane’s flashback to his childhood show a young, carefree, happy child, playing in the snow with his beloved sled, Rosebud. This scene is interrupted when the mother appears and hands her child over to Mr. Thatcher. Kane resists, putting the sled between he and his future guardian. However, the child is unsuccessful in fending off Mr. Thatcher, and his life is forever changed. As the scene blurs out it refocuses on Kane’s sled, Rosebud, that is slowly being suppressed under the snow. This symbolizes Kane’s childhood being left behind.
These images of his painful childhood are also apparent in other scenes of the film. After Susan leaves Kane, we see him clutching the snow globe and later, murmuring the word, “Rosebud” as he lay dying.
Kane is a prime example of Freud’s theory that nothing can fill the absence of childhood repressions. While Kane amassed a fortune, “there is no profit in gaining the whole world if one has lost one’s childhood” (Wattenberg 551).
In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the protagonist, Joel, is motivated by his desire to escape the painful memories of his past.

Joel and Clementine were very much in love, but their diverse lifestyles drove them apart. Clementine is very adventurous, impulsive while Joel is very mechanical and prefers his routine. Nevertheless, Clementine’s presence in Joel’s life gives him purpose. However, since Clementine and Joel are opposites, their relationship comes to an end. They are both devastated and cannot handle the pain of a broken heart. Clementine decides to go under a procedure to physically erase all memories of their past and upon hearning the news, Joel also decides to undergo the process.
This film epitomizes Emerson’s belief, "We house with the insane, and must humor them; then conversation dies out” (Emerson 292). The “humoring” refers to the impulse and lust Clementine and Joel had for one another. “The conversation” dies when Clementine decides to remove Joel from her memory; when can no longer “house the

insane.”
The film raises a philosophical question: does having a spotless mind bring eternal sunshine? No, for an individual may forget their memories but they cannot forget their natural human impulses and their feelings. Sometimes feelings can even override memories. After Joel erases his memories of Clementine he still remembers the last words she spoke to him, “Meet me in Montauk.” Joel’s will to persevere this memory is so strong it outlasted the procedure, and that is where he meets Clementine again, after the surgery and they reconnect.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind demonstrates that removing painful memories to better one’s life is ineffective for it gives an individual the opportunity to unknowingly repeat the same cycle, as Wattenberg would say “the recidivism problem.” Every character in the film who had their memory erased to forget a loved one, out of impulse, ends up back in love with them. In the film one can erase memories but not impulses and feelings.
Although some might fault Kane, Rick and Joel for being unable to effectively confront the memories of their past, it also bears worth noting that “traumatic memories are not available to the patient in the way his commonplace ones are, but act “as a kind of foreign body” in the psyche, “an affective agent in the present even long after it first penetrated” (Kaplan 26). Conversely, maybe Freud was correct that the only way to overcome such tragic memories is through “making them conscious (so) that we acquire the power to get rid of the symptoms” (Freud 41).