![]() But the fact that Joel is technically in charge here may show us that he's able to take on this role for himself and be an equal partner for Clem this time around.Wouldn’t life be easier if we could forget our pain? Just eradicate unwanted memories from our minds and move on with no trace of them ever occurring? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind tackles this very idea. Maybe Joel's decision to try and hang on to these memories is really a regression back into a flawed understanding of who Clem is and what she can do for him. ![]() Joel is stuck thinking of Clem as the manic pixie dream girl he wants her to be, and it's only in Joel's happy memories that Clem actually takes on this role and comes up with great ideas. There's no right answer, but we think Clem might be taking on the savior role that Joel initially gave to her. So if Clem is part of Joel's mind, how is she thinking these things, and not Joel himself? Then Clem has the idea to hide in memories that are off the map, and later on, she suggests they use Joel's repressed memories for extra protection. So if the memories aren't influenced by Joel's anger or frustration in that way, it seems safe to say they are reasonably accurate.īut then who is really coming up with Clem's ideas? Clem, after all, is the one who suggests that Joel try to wake himself up, which almost sort of works. So it looks like Joel's memories aren't just making stuff up-otherwise, they might show Clem getting around. In the memories, for example, there's no evidence that Clem sleeps with people to get them to like her, even though Joel accuses her of this on his tape. Of course, all of Joel's memories are based on something, so even if Clem gets a bit distorted in his mind, there is some basis in reality. If all we see of Clem is Joel's projection of her, is it possible for us to know what she is actually like? In other words, the Clem we see in Joel's head isn't actually Clem-it's merely Joel's projection of Clem, and so we never really know for sure whether this truly represents her character. Most of Eternal Sunshine actually takes place in Joel's mind, meaning that all characters except for Joel himself are merely projections of Joel's subconscious. Clem-in-Mindīut this is where Clem as a character gets a bit tricky. "Nice" might have sounded great to Clem at first, but in the end, "nice," all by itself, definitely doesn't cut it. At first, opposites attract, but over time, that attraction wears off, and both Joel and Clem are repelled by their differences. ![]() She might like to drink a bit too much, for one thing, and maybe isn't aware of why Joel would think she's too immature to be a mother.īut the biggest problem is that she gets bored with Joel, and she starts to feel trapped. ![]() She's an actual person with actual character, and she definitely has some problems of her own. She may be fun, but she's not without her own personality. Joel is so blinded by this idea that he practically doesn't hear her.Īnd it turns out Clem is right. Joel's response? "I still thought you were gonna save my life, even after that."Ĭlem is highly aware of how she is viewed She knows that men see her as more of an idea than as a real person she's an add-on to their lives that relieves them of their own pain or monotony or whatever they're trying to escape. But I'm just a f***ed-up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind. In Barnes & Noble, for example-only the second time Joel and Clem have seen each other-Clem tells Joel straight up, "Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. This is really where the whole conflict of the movie starts, even if we don't quite catch on until the end. Of course, these dream girls themselves don't really matter: they're always perfectly content, and they're totally on board with fixing the downtrodden male protagonist. His life is dull and gray, but Clem is going to teach him to live and feel, and it's going to be great. Wow, does that not sound exactly like what Joel thinks of Clementine Kruczynski? She's fun and spontaneous, and he is just stuck in a rut. Here's how Rabin describes such ladies: "hat bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures" ( source). The term "manic pixie dream girl" has really taken off since it was coined by Nathan Rabin, a film critic who was responding to Kirsten Dunst's character in Elizabethtown.
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