Steph Dunn- In Class #3

I first saw the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in my Lit and Film class in high school. I fell in love with it. The plot was genius and the character development was deep and multidimensional. The thing that caught my attention about this movie was its parallels to fate. This has always been a very interesting topic to me, but can also be tough to discuss. Seeing the way Joel and Clem met in the beginning it was such an honest, true form of love. He looked at her with eyes that showed affection and she didn't want to be anywhere but close to him. This rare form of love is so refreshing to see on the big screen. In most movies we are fed this ideal version of love that we cannot help but to think it is normal. Joel and Clem go from a state of infatuation to real life. They are fighting and getting frustrated with each other, their true colors are shining through. It is so important to not only see the happiness that is love, but also the heartache. From the constant fighting they decide they can't do it anymore and split ways. Clem is so distraught that she turns to Lacuna Inc. which is a medical procedure that causes you to eliminate someone from your memory. Joel goes to see her at Barnes and Noble and she acts like she doesn't even know him. Joel gets frustrated and figures out what she has done. He decided to spite her that he will do the same. To sum it up they go through a song and dance to try and regain the memories that they lost, but they are running from memory to memory. This is such a cool way to look at life, jumping from one memory to another. In the end we figure out that the beginning of the movie is actually the second time they met. It shows us that even if we think we have a huge role in planning out our lives, what is meant to happen will happen. In Joel and Clem's situation they were meant to be together and no medical procedure can change that.