The Suffering In Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie Kaufman tells the story of Joel Barish and Clementine Kruczynski, a socially awkward man and a free-spirited girl, who fall in love despite their differences in personality. After going through a painful breakup, Clementine receives a surgery to have her memories of him erased, and shortly thereafter, Joel finds out and decides to erase his memories of her as well. While undergoing the memory-erasing process, Joel begins to regret his decision, and tries to stop it from happening. But by this time, it is too late and almost all of his memories of Clem have been erased forever. He does remember one memory they shared, and that is of Montauk. Because of this memory, he eventually meets her again, and they end up falling in love a second time, all while knowing how

In David Brooks happiness studies essay, What Suffering Does, he presents several ideas critiquing happiness that support the claims made in Kaufman’s film. He believes people are “formed through suffering,” and that suffering makes them the person they are today (Brooks 566). This idea relates to the film because the whole relationship brought about suffering, but when they had the chance to do it over again, they still chose to. Brooks’ claim supports Kaufman’s film in that painful memories should not be forgotten, because we are formed through suffering. We also see Brooks’ claims through Clementine choosing to get her memory erased. This supports the idea that healing is a process, and for Clementine that process involved erasing Joel from her mind. It also goes into his claim that people reach a deep point where they are unaware of themselves and have a “more accurate sense of their own limitations” (567). Clementine reached that point and she believed it was the only way to make the pain go away and move on with her