The films ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ and ‘Memento’, by Charlie Kaufman and Christopher Nolan respectively, deal with memory or more specifically, the loss of memory. The films hypothesize that when our memories have been taken away from us such as in ‘Eternal Sunshine’, or we are unable to make new memories as in ‘Memento’, there is a part of us that has been destroyed, along with our ability to define the line between fantasy and reality. The definition of memory itself in the cognitive neurosciences memory is stated “…to be the psychological function most closely linked with one’s human uniqueness…they capture events in the world as personal experiences.”[1] The statement can be read as memory being the one thing that defines us and in-turn defining our reality. As a re-constructive mechanism memory allows the past to become a part of the present, and the experiences that we have had are ingrained into our future, thus defining our perception of this world and the things around us. When we have lost our past, or unable to make a new past and stuck in an ever-perpetual present, our future is denied and we are no longer able to associate to what is truthful, and what is not. Thus, when our memories are taken away from us the world as we know it ceases to exist and we are left with either a twisted and degraded version of it or nothingness, as depicted in ‘Eternal Sunshine’ and ‘Memento’.

‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ tells of the romance between two lovers, Joel and Clementine, and their subsequent fall-out, and its effect upon Joel. Steven Johnson writes them as “…two star-crossed lovers whose stars have gotten so crossed that they decide to erase their memories of each other, using the services of a company called Lacuna Inc.”[2] The centre of the film (the memory deletion) revolves around Joel’s memories of his life with Clementine slowly being erased, and his in-ability to exist outside of some sort of mental emptiness after the procedure. The very first scenes of the film are near the “ending” of the timeline, after Joel has already removed the memory of Clementine and the better part of the last two years. It includes a narrative voice-over that seems as empty as the tone that he narrates in, carrying hints of his erased memories. “I ditched work today. Took a train out to Montauk,” he says in a flat, emotionless voice, “I don’t know why.” As Jason Sperb observes, Joel is unable to understand the “why” to everything, whether it be the emptiness that he feels, or things that he does.[3] Joel’s in-ability to understand is a result of his memory being deleted. Clementine, once the dominant element of his life for the last two years, is gone. Nothing remains of her (or so it seems), and he has little to no depth or substance to go on. His past is no longer recallable by his present, and thus his existence as a person is denied, which means that he can no longer define reality.

The majority of the film itself is actually grounded in what we can define as fantasy, as Joel struggles to salvage his memories of Clementine as his reaction towards the deletion procedure slowly changes over time. He eventually realizes that he does not want his memories deleted, or rather both his love for her and his notion of self. He realizes that there is a need for a past that although, un-claimable and un-shape-able, is also something that cannot and should not be taken from his existence, as Sperb states.[4] He tries to find Clementine, and when he does, tries to run away and hide her so that she can’t be taken away. This game of cat-and-mouse is futile, as he eventually realizes that she will fade to the procedure. Joel’s eventual acceptance of the loss of Clementine and the subsequent fading of the memory leads directly to the opening scene. Reality is no longer real, as even although those memories can be seen as fantasy, they no longer exist and cannot define what is truthful anymore. Joel’s perception is no longer objective – he cannot forcibly attain a truthful reading of his life and of his reality – instead his perception now is subjective to the things around him, whether they may seem real or not.

Yet according to Fredrika Shulman, memories are affected by the objects that they are associated with, as lieux de mémoire (memorial sites); through the preserving of these items can then memory be recollected regardless of temporal discourses.[5] The definition of reality is based upon these objects that remind ourselves of what we can remember, just as Dr. Howard Merzwiak gives Joel explicit instructions to remove everything he has that is associated with Clementine. They act as “memory markers”, as Merzwiak states – items of value that act as “…an emotional core to each of our memories.” As a result, when through a twist of fate both Joel and Clementine are informed that they use to be lovers and receive back all the items that they had taken to be disposed of by Lacuna Inc, they are almost instantly reminded of the connotations contained in the items themselves. Although they are unable to associate memories of words and images toward these items, they are nonetheless able to recognize emotions and the items as artifacts that transmit the past, even though it is a past they no longer know. So in a way, while our sense of reality may be lost through the removal of our past, so too is it regained through either making new memories or regaining items associated with the past that is erased. As Sperb argues “…the future – as in end of ‘Eternal Sunshine’ – becomes the past anyway.” He sees that it is not a “definitive linear history” that guides our understanding, but much rather that the “…temporal boundaries will simply reconstruct themselves in the absence of the possibility of a preserved past.”[6]

On the other hand, “Memento” deals with the ever-perpetual present. The protagonist, Leonard Shelby, suffers a peculiar form of anterograde amnesia in which he is unable to form new memories after a blow to the head. Two men had broken into his home and raped and murdered his wife; Leonard shot one intruder but the other attacked him from behind. His last permanent memory was of his wife dying on the bathroom floor. The entire film revolves around Leonard’s inability to form new memories – he is spatially and temporally dislocated and unable to relocate himself, stuck in a forever “now” moment, as though time goes on without him. His notion of “reality” is thus forever stuck at the moment of his wife’s death; although he is able to function semi-normally he lives in little pockets of reality – a few hours here, a few there. Yet, as the film goes on it is revealed to us that in actually fact his reality are all just self-contained fantasy narratives, manipulated by others around him due to his inability to form a coherent linear structure of the world.

Leonard is in a constant state of confusion and altered reality; he is unable to associate with anything around him, as shown in the first scenes of Leonard with him waking up in a non-descript black and white motel room. Leonard then tracks through the motions of the voiceover chronologically. Leonard: “So where are you? You’re in some motel room. You just, you just wake up and you’re in […] in a motel room. There’s the key. It feels like, maybe, it’s just the first time you’ve been there, but perhaps, you’ve been there for a week, three months. It’s kinda hard to say. I don’t know. It’s just an anonymous room.” Leonard’s inability to graft new memories into his mind forces him to graft it on to his body – an “…overlaid topography of tattoos, mnemonic traces carved and inked in Leonard’s flesh…”[7], as well as having numerous Polaroid’s dotted around of people and things as he progresses in his quest of vengeance. Furthermore, because of his inability to recall recent experiences it means that he misses the impact of traumatic events upon reality. As such, William G. Little critiques him as “…a character wracked by disappointment.”[8] All these elements mean that Leonard is unable to identify the world in a post-traumatic view; because of his inability to remember he is constantly forced to go through the pain of his wife’s passing, each time as if it had just happened although he might be months down the time-stream. His identity is limited to what he was pre-accident and his notion of truth and reality is focused on the very present. This presents a problem, as two characters that revolve around him, Ted and Natalie, are shown to manipulate him into doing certain things and him being absolutely unaware. His definition of reality is no longer his, but rather what other people tell him and the scatterings of notes that he gives himself.

This holds true even to the audience, as we are being constantly put under pressure to remember what happens before, as the film is edited in a regressive format. We are constantly sent through “before” sequences that “…swipes the board of the game and demands yet another futile strategy of sense and memory.”[9] In essence, we as the audiences are subjected to being Leonard; we are only ever allowed the knowledge of “now” – broken narratives that contradict the one before, which contradicted the one before that. We, just as Leonard is, are subjected to a constant revising of the present, of reality and what we perceive to be the real truth. Yet at the very end of the film, which is supposedly the earliest point in the time-stream, is of Leonard and Ted having an argument. Ted tells Leonard that he had already looked, found and killed the “John G.” that injured him and killed his wife. Ted shows Leonard a Polaroid of him after the murder, and then accuses him of “…having become a killer, of having begun to like to kill people, and even of needing to kill in order to give his life meaning.”[10] It seems that what both Leonard and the audiences have perceived as truth is not real, and in-turn our defined reality is shattered. The lack of memory of the “before” means that everything that we have held to be truthful so far is turned into fantasy, a narrative that should not have existed in the first place. As Clarke states, “…with the continual juxtaposition of contrary images, the aporias of truth and falsity in the present become more and more urgently revealed.”[11]

Because we are forced to adapt to Leonard’s view, we are then drawn in to his world where truthful definitions are made, in reality, non truthful. Indeed, if everything that we have held to be “true” and “real” has been presented as false, than what about Leonard himself? Is his story of his wife and his amnesia truthful and a truthful definition of reality, or is it all a part of a made-up fantasy by Leonard himself? As we have not experienced the before and the after, merely the ever-perpetual present, we have no memories of these events. Thus, we are unable to form coherent judgement upon this matter, and we can gain no clear definition of reality and a truthful modal propriety.

Reality, as observed by viewing both Joel and Leonard, is really a sense of self and character being reflected on to the world as we dictate. It is a concept, which albeit vague, is something that centres itself on one’s notion of the world as one perceives it, through the experiences they have had that influenced and shaped them in the past.  It is a notion of relativity and deduction: when something is not one thing, than what we are left with is its absolute definition. As such, our experiences, or memories to be more exact, shape our perception, our notion of self and the relation to the world around us. When our experiences and memories, of which that define “us” of whom and what we are, are deleted, lost or disabled than our “reality” is altered and is thus no longer true. While Joel and Leonard suffer from different forms of memory deprivation, both remain the same in that they no longer exist in a reality defined by “truthful” values. What they are left with are empty realities that are not grounded and unacceptable, as they can no longer decide what reality is and what fantasy is. Both characters no longer have a reference point for their realities. Joel cannot remember his past, and so his present is also blank, just as his future will be, while Leonard cannot form new memories, and so is stuck in a time-less state in which his definition of “reality” is constantly effected by those around him, and the “Leonard” of a very distant past. For both men, reality is now either nothing, or perverted. Yet luckily for Joel, he might still have a chance to make a new reality.

Bibliography

Bianco, Jamie Skye. “Techno-Cinema”. Comparative Literature Studies 41.3 (2004), 377-403.

Clarke, Melissa. “The Space-Time Image: The Case of Bergson, Deleuze, and Memento”. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 16.3 (2002) 167-181

Conway, Martin A., Campbell, Ruth and Gathercole, Susan E. “Introduction: Case Studies in the Neuropsychology of Memory.” Broken Memories: Case Studies in Memory Impairment. Ed. Campbell, Ruth and Conway, Martin A. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1995. XVII.

Gondry, Michael (dir.) and Kaufman, Charlie. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. New York: Focus Features, 2004.

Little, William G. “Surviving Memento.” Narrative 13.1 (2005) 67-83

Nolan, Christopher, director and screenwriter. Memento. New York: Newmarket Films, 2000.

Schulman, Fredrika. “The Objects of Memory: Collecting Eternal Sunshine.” Philaments 5 (2004). 3^rd April, 2007 <http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/publications/philament/issue5_Critique_Shulman.htm>

Sperb, Jason. “Internal Sunshine: Illuminating Being-Memory in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. Kritikos vol. 2 (2005). 3^rd April, 2007 <http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~nr03/Internal%20Sunshine.htm>

Steven, Johnson. “The Science of Eternal Sunshine”. Slate Magazine, 22/03/04. 3^rd April, 2007 <http://slate.msn.com/id/2097502>