Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Do Clementine and Joel Stay Together or Not?

                Maybe. The answer is maybe.

            Not wanting to be that guy who teases a definitive answer to a difficult question and forces you to read a ten-page essay only to cop-out with a non-committal excuse of an answer, I’m telling you up and front the answer is maybe. 

Though nations have long warred over this matter of great importance, the film itself does not answer once and for all whether or not Joel Barrish and Clementine Krychinzki find lasting happiness together at conclusion of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I cannot give a definitive answer as to whether Joel and Clementine’s love will last until the stars turn cold or just through the weekend. This essay cannot do that.

            What this essay can do is explore the in-text evidence the film gives for either side to help you, the reader, understand the mechanics, merits, and blindspots of either interpretation of the ending. It can also reveal the underlying assumptions of either interpretation and whether your preferred ending actually aligns with your core beliefs, whatever shape they take by the time we're done. So maybe stick around ...

            Rewinding a little, the focus of today’s essay is a breakout indie film from 2004, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Though director Michel Gondry had little experience outside of music videos in directing, the film was met with tremendous critical success consummated by Oscar-nominations for best lead actress and best original screenplay, winning the latter. 

 The film received widespread acclaim for its stunning portrait of the human psyche. That's the kind of praise normally applicable to any movie with sharp dialogue and a novel premise. But in this case, half of the movie literally takes place in the mind of the main character.

            The film follows two former lovers fresh out of their breakup, Joel and Clementine, portrayed by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. Frustrated, the two undergo a medical procedure to have each other erased from their memories. In doing so, however, they come to realize that while their relationship eventually came crashing down, they once had genuine love for each other, and the possibility of losing that love forever becomes unbearable. 

The bulk of the film has Jim actively try to combat the procedure and hold onto his memories of Clementine before they're gone forever, but he is ultimately unsuccessful, and they are erased from one another’s memory. Later they meet again as complete strangers and their love is reborn. Things become complicated when they learn that they once had a history together. Even so, they decide to pursue a relationship, and they are granted another chance at happiness together.

           For reference, here are the final lines from the film:

         Joel: I can't see anything that I don't like about you.
           Clementine: But you will! But you will. You know, you will think of things. And I'll get bored with you and feel trapped because that's what happens with me.

Joel: Okay.

Clementine: . . . Okay.

                So, the film ends with them back together, but it what it doesn’t say is whether or not Joel and Clementine will eventually come to the same conclusions they did before and ultimately break up again. They’re rebuilding a relationship, they aren’t picking up where they left off, and where they left off wasn’t exactly assuring. They aren’t guaranteed a happy ending, which has caused a division between lovers of the movie on what they look like five years down the road. I've seen and heard very compelling arguments for both sides.      

    But the fact that their relationship could go either way doesn't take away from the necessity of unfolding the ending and speculating whether Joel and Clementine do have a future together. In that spirit, we're going to track the two main interpretations of this film's ending and examine some of the textual, contextual, and paratextual evidence supporting both claims. Do Joel and Clementine actually stay together? Who knows? But looking at the film and its main thesis, you get the idea that whatever your reading, that's kind of the point in the first place. 

SCENARIO 1 Joel and Clementine do not end up together

    Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman explained part of his motivation in writing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as a response to his experience watching romantic comedies, saying: 

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

“They’ve been very damaging to me growing up in that in that I had these expectations in what I thought my life was going to be like and what my romantic life was going to be like, and as I got older and I realized my life wasn’t like that, you know, it became kind of depressing and I thought [...] real life was more interesting and I should try to explore that and not put more damaging stuff in the world.”

          Kaufman does not specify exactly what tropes or ideologies he was trying to rebuff, but we can definitely guess at some of them. Romantic comedies by design tend to place the union of the starring pair at peak importance, subscribing to a belief that just because two people had a spark, they are owed a happily ever after, whatever the circumstances. And if pursuing this relationship elicits agony and turmoil for all involved parties, all the better. 

            You can see up front how Kaufman might position these two as a rebuttal against this trend. After all, Joel and Clementine are in many ways polar opposites. Joel is prudent and introspective. Clementine is vivacious and spontaneous. If you didn’t know that they were the leading couple of a romance, you wouldn’t naturally pair them together. A second chance can’t save a relationship where two individuals have no common ground.

            An early version of the script actually explored the idea of these two ill-matched individuals continually bound to each other. This ending took place far in the future with a much older Clementine undergoing the procedure to erase Joel for at least the fifteenth time. This ending was scrapped, but from what I’ve researched, this basic concept was a part of the workshop vision of the film for quite some time and was only discarded shortly before production began. Though his idea is not canonized by the finished film, it does introduce the idea of cycles and repeated errors.

         The idea of Clem and Joel following a cycle is expounded upon in great detail in this video essay by The Take. The short of it is that Clementine’s everchanging hair color follows a seasonal color scheme that mirrors the status of her relationship with Joel. Green/spring/new love, red/summer/matured love, orange/fall/dying love, blue/winter/dormant love. This observation claims that like the seasons Clem and Joel’s love will follow an unchanging pattern. Maybe once, maybe many times over a lifetime. The connection between Clementine’s hair color and the seasons could have been a deliberate creative choice, leftover from an earlier vision of the film, and an indicator separation is inevitable for Joel and Clementine.

            The argument favoring Clem and Joel separating isn’t so much about shutting down the idea of lasting love. Rather, it might be about championing the idea that you can exit a relationship and still come out in one piece. Most who subscribe to the reading of Joel and Clementine eventually breaking up aren’t out to punish them or deny them happiness, they simply don’t think they belong together. 

Proponents of this reading usually aren’t out to undermine the value of fighting for true love or anything like that. Rather, they are promoting a different value, one that says the experience of love is more important than its permanence. Their victory isn’t necessarily in staying together, but by not undergoing the erasure procedure after their break-up and discarding all the good they gained from their relationship. 

    The standard model for romantic films places paramount importance on the union of the leading couple, implying that if Meg Ryan ends up with anyone but Tom Hanks then romance is dead. It’s easy to see where adhering purely to this logic can have dangerous real-world application, and it’s easy to see why a person like Kaufman may feel the world needs more films that acknowledge this. Outside of the Hollywood umbrella, much of life is moving in and out of relationships, and the end of any one of them isn’t the end of the world. Maybe this is a film about two lovers who have to move past one another but learn to appreciate what they did for each other anyway.

SCENARIO 2 Joel and Clementine do end up together

            As the erasure procedure nears completion, Joel has the following exchange with a mental replication of Clementine.

            Joel: It would be different, if we could just give it another go-round.

            Clementine: Remember me. Try your best. Maybe we can.

         "Maybe we can," doesn't sound like a couple ready to shrug their shoulders and say "Oh well, we did our best." This interaction instills a hope in Joel, and the audience, that reconciliation is possible.

            While much of the conversation around Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind celebrates its creative avant-garde approach to the craft, the film still follows a fairly straightforward character arc for Joel. His motivation is always clear, for example, as is the want vs need dichotomy. 

            Traditional narrative follows a character’s progression from needing something to getting something, and the something they get is usually an internal awakening or realization and is probably not the thing they thought they needed. Achieving this awakening is typically blocked by a fallacious belief that needs to be resolved across the narrative. Rocky has the titular character fixating on whether he is strong enough to outbox a celebrity fighter, and his character arc is about him recognizing that what makes him special is that his fighting spirit does not waver and is not dependent on "winning" by any official measure. He doesn't back down from unbeatable odds or powerful opposition, and that's something he can be proud of.

    Joel has almost the exact opposite character flaw: he is overly averse to vulnerability or risk. His unwillingness to confide his deepest thoughts to Clementine is a large part of what drove her away. Joel letting Clem leave without putting up any kind of fight led her to undergo the procedure in the first place. The film then presents Joel’s timidity as the thing standing in the way of him being with Clementine; consequently, shedding himself of this timidity clears the way for him to regain her love.
           Joel’s behavior after the erasure suggests that possibility. Immediately after awakening from the procedure, Joel skips out on going to work to head to Montauk beach, an act of spontaneity that he certainly never would have done before his time with Clementine. He seems to have carried some of her daring with him. Joel has learned to break out of his comfort zone, thereby shedding the character flaw that was keeping him from maintaining a relationship with Clementine.

        But one of the special features of this narrative is that the bulk of the character development is erased from the minds of the characters: at the film’s ending, Joel does not remember Clementine at all, let alone his decision to try to win her back. Any rediscovery of his love for Clementine won’t matter if he can’t take it with him. The question of whether Joel can really move past his insecurities and be with Clementine comes down to whether he carries his character development with him.

          Let’s return once more to the film’s final scene. After Joel and Clementine come to terms with their shared history, Clementine apologetically walks out of Joel’s apartment. This is an echo of all the times Joel let Clementine slip through his fingers, including Joel and Clementine’s last argument before they underwent the procedures and their very first interaction when Joel deserted Clementine in the beach house. These encounters all ended with Joel shying from doing the hard thing (apologizing to Clementine, staying with her at the beach house, etc.), and if Joel was truly that same shy would-be-suitor, he would do the same here, but he does not. Against his nature, Joel reaches takes the plunge and pursues Clementine.

            This represents a significant shift in Joel’s character, evidence that he is not doomed to repeat the mistakes of his first relationship with Clementine. Even if Joel cannot remember his relationship with Clementine, or how he fought to preserve his memory of her, an imprint of that experience remains with him. And this imprint could very well make the difference between whether they remain together or not.

            How exactly did that bit of their past relationship survive? Again the film doesn’t specify. This movie celebrates the mysterious nature of love. The part that isn’t logical and doesn’t play by the rules. The film says that love doesn’t always make sense, but that doesn’t mean it's not an active force in our life. Somehow, Joel’s internal victory wasn’t just washed away in the erasure, and because of it he has a second chance to find happiness with Clementine.

            The argument favoring lasting love for the two of them isn’t so much about playing into

sanitized and groomed concepts about love and relationships, but rather about believing in the capacity for two people to be happy together despite not being perfect themselves. By the film’s end, Joel and Clementine have learned to not be deterred by each other’s imperfections. 

Both Joel and Clementine are flawed individuals, and that sometimes creates friction, but mature love doesn’t abandon ship anytime there’s stormy weather. Real love is about continuing to care for your partner even through the stress and coming out stronger together. Maybe this is a story about two lovers who despite the odds learn to move past their individualistic impulses to create a something beautiful.

So Which is it?

            The frustrating thing about this film is that whatever side you’re on, there’s just enough textual evidence supporting your stance to make you invested in it, but not quite enough to make you feel secure in it. Do Joel and Clementine have lasting love? They could. They could.

                A viewer’s reading of the film comes down to whatever he or she felt was the limitation Joel and Clementine needed to overcome, whatever the viewer feels is most important. Is the film about learning how to make peace with lost love, or is it about learning to fight for love? There’s roughly equal evidence for either reading, and that’s okay. Where stories are concerned, one interpretation does not invalidate another. The film is whatever its audience needs it to be.

           We often come to movies wanting to hear our own predispositions recited to us, assuring us that, “yes, my worldviews are right.” It’s a natural tendency, but a limiting one. We do this because we don’t like the insecurity of walking without a safety net. But very few of life’s experiences come with that safety net, and if we spend our efforts exclusively on those that have a guaranteed favorable outcome, we run the risk of never really participating in anything—much like Joel at the start of the film. It’s fitting that the audience coming to terms with the film’s ending echoes Joel and his development past needing that safety net.                 

 --The Professor