Is it normal to want to have a relationship with someone with whom we went wrong as a couple? This is a question that I have often seen people do, sometimes even I did it myself. And although the answer seems obvious to some, I have always felt that there is more to it than a "yes" or a "no", something that makes me wonder why we started a relationship with that person in the first place. that magic that captivated us in that first moment, whether with a smile, a gesture, a face, a few words, is still in that person that in the end made us feel that feeling of "emptiness" located right between our stomach and our neck? Is this because we forget that event that marked the separation or because we remember too much that first captivating moment?
Yeah. I know, these are many questions that seem to create another 10 more along the way. But a film that I saw a long time ago and that I still see recurringly today has helped me to understand better and to give certain answers.
Eternal sunshine of a spotless mind expresses a very different and somewhat confused idea of love compared to the rest of romantic films that may exist. To begin the story begins in the same way that is the mind of our protagonist Joel, disorganized and without a starting point, following only what he thinks is his own conscience trying to empathize with Clementine, the girl with extravagant hair that caught her attention since he saw her, what the 2 don't know is that it's not the first time they see each other, and it isn't the first time they feel the same, since both had already been in love and both had shared their lives until they separated, and both decided on their own to erase from their minds each other in an act of impulsiveness to try to forget the pain they felt after their separation. This is when I wonder, if they both forgot each other, how is it possible that being such a big world, with so many things to do and so many things to live, end up meeting again and starting to feel all those feelings again? What led them to be together in the beginning? This is where determinism comes in.
Determinism: Is the philosophical theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes. Determinism is usually understood to preclude free will because it entails that humans cannot act otherwise than they do. The theory holds that the universe is utterly rational because complete knowledge of any given situation assures that unerring knowledge of its future is also possible
In simpler words, "everything happens for a reason". and it's for this reason that we see as though Joel decided to erase his memory just like Clementine, the moments together, the shared jokes, the ease of relating are still there, as if they were predestined to be together, but by nature Clementine's impulsiveness and Joel's conformism are in the same way destined to separate again, creating a kind of circle, which can be vicious or not depending on how you want to take it.
The scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman, introduces in his history the deterministic philosophy to express in a tacit way the idea of "predestined love", that idea in which a person thinks that the arrival of his partner is an intervention of destiny and that therefore must have a deeper meaning than just a set of coincidences and linked causalities. We can observe this in certain points of the film, an example of this is a line of Joel's dialogue, where he says "I can't remember anything without you" expressing that he only has memories in which Clem is present, ignoring in some way his past life before He met her. And it is precisely this feeling with which many people relate, because at the moment of separation they find it difficult to think of a moment that they didn't share with their ex-partner, thus implanting the idea of determinism in our mind when trying to give a justification to why we met that person in first place.
The film guides us to the end of it reinforcing these points, because the more memories are erased from Joel, the more he tries to cling to Clementine, to the point where the procedure succeeds and all traces of the memories of her are erase from his mind. But nevertheless, due to "destiny" they both meet again, the attraction re-exists despite the fact that neither of them remembers the other, and they end up trying to start a date like in the first time they met, only that this time, both of them listen to the tapes that were previously recorded before their minds were erased in which they express the reasons of why they wanted to carry out such a drastic action. The introduction of this scene in the script is a subtle way for Kauffman to use logic and reason as antagonists to the deterministic idea, because in the recordings both are giving the arguments of how and why the relationship began to deteriorate, they even exchange strong words between them and express the impotence and sadness of having gone through that love relationship. And despite listening to the arguments that both are giving to themselves with their voices as if their own conscience talking to them was. In the end both close with the following dialogue.
Kauffman at the end tries to tell us that determinism prevails over rational thinking, by teaching us that despite all the bad things they both experienced, they still consider that there is a reason why they were together at first, and that because of that reason it is worth trying again. Although history and Clementine herself tell us verbatim that it is possible to happen again, and that both separate and both end up erasing their minds and finding each other again. It will always be above all the idea that fate united them and that there is no other possibility that it could be otherwise.
And that has been my little analysis of philosophy within the film. If at some point you have identified yourself with the deterministic idea, be it with a person, a job, or an event in your life, you can share it in the comments. You can also leave your idea about the movie if you already saw it. And as always.
Thanks for your attention