The Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a film that narrates the lives of a couple who wish to wipe all aspects of their relationship away from their memories in a clinic named Lacuna—the word itself meaning gap or emptiness, which in return refers to the service the same-named clinic in the film provides. It plays with the concepts of memory, society, and perception, and questions the balance of association’s effects on a character, and a character’s effect on the memories they form. (“The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Memory and Association”, n.d.) It reaches towards personal matters such as disquieting memories deep in our psyche, and touches on the thoughts we put aside whenever we’re in the company of others and whenever we’re

In fact, the film can be considered as a big metaphor of the quote itself, which is about Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence—a thought experiment to ask one’s self if they would still choose the same choice they made if ever their life would repeat in a loop. It’s akin to pressing a reset button, and in the film, this is represented by Lacuna, a clinic owned by Dr. Mierzwiak that advertises their service as a way for people to erase memories. After a painful breakup, Joel heads to Lacuna on impulse to wipe Clementine away from his memories after knowing that the latter did the same earlier on, however even if Joel’s memories had already been erased, there were still remnants of their past that continue to persist even after the erasure process. Mary quoting Nietzsche regarding the bliss of the forgetful seems fitting, nevertheless the reality of their situation, especially after the revelation near the end about her affair with Dr. Mierzwiak, may not be blissful at all. In fact, they may have not been left with “spotless minds” but emptiness as a relationship is a loom—it weaves lives into one another, and just how much weaving you would have to do in order to erase all traces of one is unclear. (Grau,