A dark and thoughtful film about why people stay in toxic relationships disguised as a positive, romantic film about love

Rating: 9/10 (21 July 2017)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind understands what relationships are like in a way that is uncanny. While masquerading as a happy movie about a loving couple, Eternal Sunshine shows the darkest and most harmful parts of relationships.
The film is about Joel (Jim Carrey) a guy in his thirties who has dated a quirky woman named Clementine (Kate Winslet). Their relationship is difficult and marred with unhappiness. When Clementine stops talking to him inexplicably, he finds that she has had an operation that erased all her memories of their relationship. Joel is distraught and gets the same operation. The film then becomes a narrative within Joel's head as he relives all of his memories with Clementine as they are erased.
The narrative is experimental, completely fragmented with some scenes that are bizarre within Joel's head. This leads to some unique, memorable, and just plain weird moments. This uniqueness gives the film its identity and the lack of linearity in the dreams both leaves the viewer the fun job of piecing together a narrative on his own while also giving the filmmakers license to contrast memories directly against each other, even when they are from different time periods.
Our characters are very quirky and not entirely likable at first. Joel is reserved and awkward, a combination that initially turned me off to his character. Clementine, on the other hand, is very expressive and emotional- perhaps to a fault. it isn't until you see the best moments these people shared together when you begin to like them. Both the characters and the film itself feel very genuine when we see their happy moments.
What is the ultimate point of Eternal Sunshine? (SPOILERS follow) What does it have to say? In the end, Joel and Clementine stay together. They know all of the horrible things that they will do to each other and they stay together anyway. The audience is happy that they stay together.
Why do they stay together? An optimist would say that it is because they are meant to be. It seems unlikely that two people would happen to fall in love again if they had no memory of their history. Maybe some people are just soulmates and they will always find each other. In fact, the same phenomenon occurs to the Kirsten Dunst character when her memories are erased- she finds the same man and falls in love with him again.
The more pessimistic answer, and in my opinion the real answer to the question is that people tend to ignore obvious red flags when starting a relationship they are excited about. The two leads share one day together, having fun as "strangers" before they are given documents telling them about their past relationship. Joel and Clementine have hard physical evidence that proves they are incompatible. Their original relationship became unhappy and borderline abusive, and the two of them have documents that detail exactly how much they come to hate each other. This is the biggest red flag that a person could ever receive: hard proof that the relationship won't work. Still, the two of them are excited about their budding relationship and their first day together, so they ignore this giant red flag and date anyway. They don't look at the documents and see how they can better their relationship, they just blindly get back together, doomed to fall into the same traps they did before, because it is the easy choice and the exciting choice. The movie ends on an optimistic note, but a viewer has to wonder about the dark implications of this and the ignorance that it takes for them to stay together.
When Joel is going through the memories of his relationship, there is an overwhelming feeling both in him and in the audience that he should stay with Clementine because the two of them have such good memories together. In essence: it doesn't matter that the relationship has grown into something horrible and toxic, they should stay together because they used to be happy and they need to hold on to those happy memories. Any person who has seen a relationship through knows this feeling as the end nears. This movie makes the audience actively cheer for that outcome. It's not until you think back on the movie's message that you realize how delusional this idea is.
The main points the film is making are common justifications that people have to stay in broken relationships: it's easy to ignore red flags, no matter how large, and it's hard to break up with someone you have good memories with. It's eerie how easy it is for the audience to cheer for these irrational justifications, and it tells us something about ourselves.
In all, Eternal Sunshine is a romantic film that really knows what long-term relationships and toxic relationships are like. The more engaged viewer will leave with an interesting message about the darkness of relationships. I strongly recommend the movie as a study of the irrational behavior people have when in relationships.