Ark of the Lost Angels

Joel and Clementine (Portrayed by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet) in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind _{(Credit: Focus Pictures)}

How Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Destroys the Manic Pixie Dream Girl​

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind may be one of the best films to have ever been produced. It’s a love story facilitated by a little light science fiction about erasing memories, and remains one of the most poignant, quirky, and memorable love stories put to film. The movie will be extensively spoiled in this article, so if you have not watched it, DO NOT PROCEED. This is a movie that deserves to be watched knowing as little as possible going in for your first viewing, so I highly recommend going to watch it. (I stand by this statement even if it means literally nobody comes back to read this article).

With spoiler warnings out of the way, a more comprehensive discussion about one of the central characters and how she destroys a very common trope. This article was built off a presentation I gave in my junior year of college for a course on literary theory.

How Happy Is The Blameless Vestal’s Lot: A Summary of the Plot

If Pulp Fiction is the finest example of a movie told out of order, then Eternal Sunshine has to be the second. The movie opens with the meek, mild-mannered Joel Barish taking a spontaneous trip to Montauk instead of going to work by switching trains at the last minute. While on this trip, he meets Clementine Kruczynski, a free-spirited, mercurial woman with vibrantly dyed hair. Despite having little in common, there is an instant connection between the two.

The movie then flashes back to a few weeks earlier, where Joel discovers this his ex-girlfriend, Clementine, had a procedure performed by Lacuna, Inc. to have her memories of him erased. Joel decides to have the same procedure done to him. The majority of the movie takes place in Joel’s memories as all of his recollections of Clementine are stripped away. Joel relives the worst parts of his relationship with Clementine first and falls back in love with her when reaching the happier, earlier times of their relationship. So much of Joel’s activities throughout the film are fighting to preserve his memories of Clementine, including hiding her in other memories of his so she’s off the ‘map’ which Lacuna is following. Thanks to a subplot following the Lacuna technicians performing the procedure, Joel’s plan fails in the conventional sense. However, in the memory of their first meeting, at a beach party in Montauk, Joel’s memory of Clementine asks him to find her again, whispering, “Meet me in Montauk.”

Having caught back up to the present, one of the Lacuna technicians had found out overnight that she and the lead scientist who created the procedure had an affair and she had the memory erased when she kissed him because she had fallen for him again. In disgust, she mails the files of everyone the company had worked on back to them, where Joel and Clementine discover that they dated previously and had their memories of each other erased. Joel and Clementine initially seem hesitant but end the movie agreeing to try again and see what happens.

Not A Concept: What Is The Manic Pixie Dream Girl

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a trope that’s been around longer than its name. The idea of this character is visible throughout works of literature in all forms stretching back for generations, but the trope name has only existed since 2007. The term was coined by the film critic Nathan Rabin in his review of Elizabethtown, as “a bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”

Put a different way, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an eccentric, usually free-spirited, creative, fun, and charming girl who enters the life of a typically lonely, brooding, quiet man to teach him a valuable lesson. Usually, it’s that he needs to take charge of his life and seek something out of it himself instead of being so passive. She typically doesn’t have any character development herself, and she is usually there to “save” the aforementioned guy, most often from himself. There are two common endings for a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. In one, she typically dies or disappears after imparting her lesson on the protagonist. In most occurrences, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and the guy have a happy ending where they ride off into the sunset together, the music swells, and we roll credits.

To provide a roughly contemporary example of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, the 2004 film Garden State comes to mind. Natalie Portman plays a character named Sam whose only purpose is to be quirky and teach the depressed and heavily medicated Andrew, played by Zach Braff, how to enjoy life. Her motivations are not explored, nor is she given much of a purpose except in relation to her effect on Andrew. This type of character is known as a flat character, she gets little development. She is also a plot device, designed to treat the maladies associated with another character.

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl as a trope is sexist, outdated, and reflects some of the worst tendencies in narrative writing. That isn’t to say that all characters who foster development in other characters are necessarily bad. Character-driven works are reliant on the characters’ effect on each other. But if you want a character, any character, to effectively make the audience believe that they inspire something in another character, then the inspiration character must feel like a person and less like a cardboard cutout with a voice box taped to it that repeats all the right things to make a man feel ‘special.’ The Manic Pixie Dream Girl, by definition, falls into the latter category.

Unfortunately, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s popularity speaks to the entertainment industry taking the wrong lessons from its output. Even the trope namer himself, Nathan Rabin, has remarked upon how he hates coining the term because so many people immediately misconstrued it as something to strive for. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is often the only prominent female character in a work, and reduces women down to being both responsible for a man’s development, and not deserving of any personality traits of their own. It’s not hard to see why this gets criticism. One of the creative problems with a Manic Pixie Dream Girl is that it cuts down on the potential directions a work can take. Her presence as an archetype within a story makes it so that the plot is very predictable: broody loner man meets quirky girl, quirky girl teaches broody loner man value of life, broody loner man’s problems are solved, quirky girl leaves broody loner man, or broody loner man and quirky girl ride off into the sunset together.

Limited characters limit your potential plots. In many cookie cutter works, it’s easy to predict how they’ll go from the very onset. Certainly that level of familiarity is a comfort in Hallmark movies, and the typical romcom, but sometimes there needs to be that special movie that shatters all expectations.

That’s why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is such a tremendous film, and Clementine is its heart.

Oh My Darling Clementine: How It All Fits Together

Clementine is the perfect antithesis to all a Manic Pixie Dream Girl stands for while looking exactly like one. Her character ended up as a preemptive critique of the archetype before it even solidified in the cultural zeitgeist under this name. That isn’t to say that Charlie Kaufman was some future-seer who had a bone to pick with future Hollywood writers and society at large when writing the film (though I wouldn’t put it past him), but by making Clementine a fully-fleshed out character, Clementine becomes a wonderful subversion to the trope. It’s important to note that the Clementine seen throughout the majority of the movie does seem to be devoted to Joel’s development…because she’s Joel’s memory of Clementine. She is, inherently, viewed from his perspective, and one slightly altered by his nostalgia at that.

When the movie introduces Clementine in the present, after she and Joel have forgotten each other, she is portrayed as the stereotypical Manic Pixie Dream Girl. With her friendly attitude and seemingly inexplicable draw towards Joel, brightly colored hair, and eccentric personality, Clementine initially appears to fall prey to this commonplace character. Clementine’s character, as revealed through Joel’s journey, subverts and deconstructs the idea of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

The central idea of the Manic Pixie Dream girl is that she exists solely for the man’s benefit. She is to make him change his ways and better himself without any regard to her needs as an individual. She is, essentially, a plot device. Clementine is introduced as such a character by serving as the object of Joel’s fascination. She brings him out of his shell when she convinces him to take an impulsive trip to the Charles River in Boston for a picnic on ice within 24 hours of meeting. All seems very Joel-centric, so far.

Clementine’s true purpose in the story is to serve as her own character, as a foil to Joel. The reason they broke up the first time is because she and Joel failed to deal with their differences and issues, not because her job at helping him was done. Not only that but she demonstrated her own agency by initiating the breakup and having Joel’s memory erased in the first place. A character written for someone else’s benefit would never have the need to take actions to benefit themselves. In fact, it is Joel’s reaction to Clementine’s actions which kickstart the whole narrative to begin with, succinctly demonstrating both characters as separate individuals with separate priorities and goals.

In fact, Clementine is looked upon as less than desirable or perfect in the first memory sequence. Joel and Clementine had a fight because Clementine was out on an alcohol-induced bender, and wrecked Joel’s car.  This incident combined with Joel’s anger towards Clementine for it and erasing her memories of him paints her as Joel’s opposition, and not someone beneficial to his development. Clementine initially occupies a place where she is treated with anger and disdain, both by Joel and the audience.

As the memories travel back farther, the car accident is revealed to be the latest incident in a series of fights at the end of their relationship. The other big revelation is that Joel is as much to blame for their troubles as Clementine, which immediately flips the idea of Clementine as an antagonist on its head. It powerfully embraces the complexity of human nature, and the problems within that can lead to troubles in a relationship. The sweet moments even amidst the fights help subvert the idea that Clementine is a flat character at all, and thoroughly blows the idea that she is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl clear out of the water.

Clementine continues to get more characterization as the movie moves forward and the memories unfold. Her insecurities and moodiness contrast with Joel’s passiveness and judgmental nature. Exploring their flaws in-depth serves to humanize both of them. For example, Joel’s unwillingness to be very open about what he is feeling is a theme that persists throughout. Had Clementine been the typical Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Joel would have learned to open up by this point in their two year long relationship, but he didn’t. It was never Clementine’s job to make him do that, and because she isn’t a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, she didn’t.

Throughout the story, Clementine is revealed to be much more nuanced than the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope suggests. In their second encounter, and one of the last memories seen towards the end of the film, she even tells Joel, “Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s lookin’ for my own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.” The degree of self-awareness, and the emphatic statement that she is not around for anyone else’s benefit underline how much of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl which Clementine isn’t.

The movie ends with the two receiving their files from Lacuna. When they play the cassettes of their interviews for each other, they recognize the high chance of repeating history if they decide to try again. Ultimately, Joel didn’t learn a lesson from Clementine because the memories were erased. Clementine didn’t learn from her own mistakes either for the same reason. Yet, when faced with the potential of trying again, Clementine’s initial instinct is to tell Joel she thinks what happened before will happen all over again, and they’ll hurt each other again. Joel responds simply with a hopeful, “Okay.”

Knowing about her own issues, and knowing that despite her care for Joel, she may not be able to move past her issues gives Clementine the agency to act for her own benefit and not just Joel’s. This is the most important difference between Clementine, and the normal Manic Pixie Dream Girl: she makes decisions for herself.

The ending also hints that they may not be together forever, which does not fit into the happy ending typical of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. It should also be worth noting that there was a potential ending for the movie that was written where an elderly Clementine would approach the doctor who performed the memory erasure and ask to have Joel erased. The camera would then pan over and reveal that she was subject to the procedure fifty times prior. Ideas that don’t make it into the final cut are not always the best barometer by which to judge a work, but the fact that the ending was even considered is just another bit of proof in Clementine’s agency, and her own decision making, even when they continually hurt her.

Of course, no discussion of Clementine and Joel could be concluded without kudos to Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey. Kate Winslet played the more animated character between the two, playing off an exquisite and unusual reserved performance from Jim Carrey. In her own right, though, Winslet crafted a masterful character that had the trappings of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl with the serious, underlying reasonings as to why her character acts the way she does. In a perfect union between writing and acting, Clementine springs to life as a fully realized person within the narrative.

And the point of Clementine’s character is to be a lesson in humanity. The movie itself is about the nature of humans as multi-faceted and flawed which requires multi-faceted, flawed, human characters. Clementine’s agency and flaws are so intrinsic to her character, and they are what makes her so compelling to both Joel and the audience.

Clementine being a subversion of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype is to be expected of a movie whose main focus is to tell a story about the nature of human beings. What makes her work so well as a criticism of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is that it was never her primary purpose. Her purpose was to help tell a story about why memories are so important to love, because they teach us lessons. A story about how the beautiful complexity of human beings is far more powerful than someone as an idea or a concept.

Clementine is the heart of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in all her messy, complex, passionate, multi-faceted glory.