The creativity and complexity of the plot in Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is matched by the excellent acting of Jim Carey and Kate Winslet as Joel and Clementine. I am sure that most women will agree that it is cosmically unfair that Kate Winslet can still look beguiling in bright blue hair with her roots showing. These characters are so winsome and authentic that you really want to just hang out with them and perhaps, invite them to church (an emergent church service, most likely.) They, like all of us, are trying to escape the mundane and find meaning in their lives. Clementine has a drinking problem and addiction to novelty that causes her to periodically change the color of her hair to a new and even more violent color. Joel is a shy, emotionally repressed artist trapped in some unidentified, but no doubt stultifying, day job who describes himself as “not an impulsive person.” Seeing Jim Carey play an emotionally repressed person is, alone, worth the price of admission to this movie! But big screen love stories are never about people well-suited to each other who fall in love and are predictably happy. Being in many ways opposites, Joel and Clementine throw into sharp relief the problems we all deal with in our own hopefully less tempestuous relationships. When problems arise, tempers flare and harsh words are said, she impulsively leaves the relationship in the most complete way available with the help of the good doctor.

How can you work on reconciliation with a person who doesn’t even remember who you are? Joel chooses to relieve his pain with a similar procedure. Doctors are aware that some patients experience partial awareness during anesthesia, hearing and remembering what is happening during their procedure. That is why we are taught to never say “oops!” in the operating room, even if it is a minor and insignificant oops. Joel becomes partially aware during his memory ablation procedure, allowing him to incorporate new and hilariously disturbing information (delivered by the bumbling technicians) into his decision to erase Clementine. Thanks to a real-life phenomenon known as lucid dreaming in which the dreamer is able to choose what happens in the dream, Joel changes his mind and decides to fight for the relationship while in his drug-induced sleep. This allows for some of the best scenes in the movie when Joel simultaneously relives his relationship with Clementine in reverse order and tries to hide his memories of her in other parts of his brain where the machine can’t find and erase them. While replicating the random, sometimes symbolic, and often abruptly changing sequences we all experience in our own dreams, the moviemakers keep the action going. It isn’t until the last ten minutes of the movie that it all begins to make sense in the linear, rational daytime world.

These last ten minutes, though, are what made me love Joel and Clementine. Despite knowing that their relationship had previously failed in a grand way, they have the courage to try again. Unlike most of us, they only have the vague outlines of their previous mistakes to learn from. I hope that this time they will have the courage to take the even harder step of love and faith and commit to each other in marriage, something Clementine predicts that they will do at one of their initial encounters. Those of us who have married understand that there are many such turning points in our relationships. There are opportunities for recommitment along the way, and many little decisions for forgiveness, charity and unselfishness that keep a marriage growing instead of festering. Rather than suffocating spontaneity and authenticity as some people are afraid marriage will do, marriage gives us the protected space to deeply know ourselves and our spouse, not just how we are now, but who we will become through the years. If we choose to let God use it in this way, marriage can be His tool to help us first face our deeper conflicts and limitations, and then actually change and grow. I hope that Clementine never loses her individuality, spontaneity and humor, but that she recognizes her abuse of alcohol and becomes the “f---ing good mother” she longs to be. I hope that Joel will find out that his life really is interesting, not just to other people, but to his Creator. I hope that he will grow in confidence, continuing in his art and creativity, and encouraged by Clementine.