Love, Like Memory

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind features Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, along with everybody’s favourite MJ, Kirsten Dunst, and Mark Ruffalo. I had been asked to watch this movie multiple times, and I always intended to, but never quite got around to it. One night during winter break, with an abundance of time on my hands and uncertainty about how to use it productively, I decided enough was enough. I started working through my ever-growing list of films I only seem to watch when I’m bored out of my mind.

Most often, they turn out to be phenomenal pieces of art that leave me thinking I should have watched them earlier. This, however, felt like one of the rare cases where the timing was perfect.

According to Wikipedia, “It stars Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet as a couple who undergo memory erasure after they break up. It uses elements of psychological drama and science fiction and a nonlinear narrative to explore the nature of memory and love.” While Wikipedia is often criticized as a source, I find this to be an accurate and concise description of the film. What I want to focus on is this phrase: memory and love.

They sound simple. Straightforward. But like all beautiful things in life, they are anything but.

In my humble opinion, memory is love—at least one version of it. It lives in remembering someone’s favourite food their mom makes, or always asking if they want coffee when you’re on a coffee run because you know they love it more than life itself. It’s in remembering their favourite character and thinking of them every time you see it, unbeknownst to them. It’s in wandering through shops and instinctively knowing they would love this or that.

But memory as love has another face.

It hurts to love. It hurts to remember when there is a scarcity of love between two people, yet every glimpse of their silhouette pulls you back into what once was. You start to heal. You see them often enough that they no longer affect you. And then, in a moment of weakness, you spiral. A friend mentions something. A familiar scent passes by. Suddenly you’re reminded of them.

You don’t lose your whole day to it—you’ve learned better than that. But in the quiet moments, when you’re zoning out in the middle of class or grabbing lunch, those memories find a vulnerable place in your heart. You wonder how you could ever forget them.

Eternal Sunshine offers us an alternate reality: one where you erase those memories and live with their true absence.

Another excerpt from Wikipedia reads: in the 2017 Netflix documentary, Jim & Andy, Carrey recalls a conversation with director Michel Gondry shortly after a breakup. Gondry described Carrey’s emotional state as “so beautiful, so broken,” and asked him to stay that way for a year to fit the character. Carrey later commented, “That’s how fucked up this business is.”

So beautiful, so broken. S o  b e a u t i f u l,  s o  b r o k e n. 

That feels like the most honest way to describe it.

The film showcases memory as fragmented and unreliable, reflected in its nonlinear structure. And that, too, feels like love. Love is fragmented. Love is unreliable. Has anyone ever truly loved unconditionally—outside of family, which carries its own complications?

Love comes in pieces. There are moments when they annoy you and you imagine your life without them. Then you return to your rhythm and realize life is better with them, and you feel foolish for ever thinking otherwise. But were you really wrong? Because when they break your heart, you realize that your love was an unreliable narrator of their love toward you.

Weeks later, you catch their scent again, and suddenly you’re back on the night you first met.

I suppose this entire reflection leads to one question: would my life be better if one erased the memories of a relationship? Of that room where we shared our most vulnerable moments—moments they later used against you. Of endless video calls at arbitrary hours, talking about everything and nothing.

Would it be better?

Highland Creek Intersection | January 27, 2026