An alternative explanation for the movie

Rating: 7/10 (7 April 2005)

This film is often misunderstood so my review may seem unusual. Overall I enjoyed this movie.
Joel (Jim Carrey) pops pills two or three times in the film. I believe he is a psychiatric patient, for example suffering from a personality disorder. This is NOT a science fiction film about mind erasing machines, or a romance film exploring the good and bad of relationships. Clementine is imaginary, as is Lacuna. One episode of pill-popping is accompanied by strange music and paranoia, so the pills are not exactly vitamins!
The memorabilia Joel has collected contain no evidence that he and Clementine were in a real relationship. There are no photos of the two of them together; rather, the photos of Kate on her own, and the crazy sketches of the couple, seem to be the belongings of a mad stalker. Kate and Joel even have a casual conversation about stalking early in the film.
My interpretation of Eternal Sunshine as an exploration of psychosis runs as follows. A few years before the film begins, Joel is an extreme introvert dating a woman called Naomi. His mental instabilities increase and one day at a Montauk beach party, missing Naomi and sitting quietly away from everyone, he even imagines meeting another person, Clementine. This girl is probably based on a (real) Barnes & Noble employee he had seen earlier. She seems real enough to him that Joel breaks up with his girlfriend Naomi.
Joel's psychiatrist (Dr. Howard Mierzwiak) prescribes medication to return him to normal. Deep down, part of Joel rebels against this, since a return to normal would necessarily strip him of the abnormal life he has come to lead (characterised in part by a fictitious relationship with 'Clementine').
The doctor's drugs appear to Joel as a mind-erasing 'machine', which can attack him at any moment (we see scenes of the machine in his doctor's office, in the street, and especially in his bed where he likes to spend a lot of time, being an introvert). The machine is just Joel's active imagination making tangible something he doesn't quite understand. The sick part of Joel wants to fight back, so he tries to entrench Clementine in his memory - witness the scenes where she runs through his childhood.
Eventually the drugs work, and Clementine is repressed. Her 'dying' words are 'meet me in Montauk', the place he first imagined her (Montauk is an anagram of 'nut amok', interestingly. Probably just a coincidence...). Joel gets back together with Naomi (this is most evident from one of the deleted scenes, where he is calling Naomi as her reinstated boyfriend) and life is normal again.
Then one day for a reason unknown to him at the time (perhaps he had skipped his medication that day), he plays hooky on work and takes the train to Montauk. The rediscovery of Clementine is not rapid or obvious; but by the end of the day their relationship is re-established. (In a deleted scene, Joel then calls Naomi and breaks up with her for the second time.) His personality disorder is back in full swing. He even remembers the earlier episode of 'mind erasure' (success with the medication) via an audio tape (again a product of his imagination, in his search for tangibility) and is repulsed that he let the erasure happen.
Where did the name Lacuna come from? In one of the first scenes of the film, Joel happens to look at his neighbour's mail, and feeling paranoid at that moment, thinks that the return address ("Lacuna") might represent something significant. Later he works the name into his explanations of what is going on in his head.
Does my interpretation sound far-fetched? Well, take the example of Stan and Mary jumping half-naked on their patient's bed: I believe it is more credible to interpret that as a figment of Joel's mind, rather than the truth.
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