Name: Janica P.

Imperial

Subject: Philo-Pysch-Social Foundations of Guidance and Counseling

Schedule: SAT (8:00 AM-11:00 AM)

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND

The movie “ Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” was written by Charlie Kaufman

and directed by Michel Gondry. The movie was starred by Kate Winslet as Clementine

Krucynski and Jim Carrey as Joel Barrish. The film was about a portrayal of self-erasing

to the fragility of memory and of love. Scenes are dimly lit and haily filmed, lending the

movie an almost documentary feel. Joel Barrish (Jim Carrey) decides on impulse to skip

work and take a train out to Mountauk, Long Island. There on a gloomy beach, he

ecounters manic extrovert Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet). The two begin talking

on the train ride home to New York, and over the next two nights love begins to bloom.

Things got complicated within their two years of living together and they somehow ended

their relationship. Clementine was very impulsive to move on with her life and so she

decided to have all her memory with Joel be erased from her mind. Joel, on the other

hand was not able to move on yet, witnessed Clementine kissing with another man. He

then decided to have the same procedure performed to Clementine. The story told in

opposite is a very common enough movie strategy to hide information from the viewers.

There were no unexpected twists or sudden revelation about Joel and Clementine, the

story was only focusing on their past memories as lovers. To sum up everything, the film

was about the need for atonement and redemption of something that was lost but later on

found.
 REFLECTION

The film “Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind” was full of complexities. For me it is

very applicable to someone who experiences awful stituation in life and wish to erased

those things in mind. The story was about a lover who encountered each other in a very

unexpected way. In the early early stage of their relationship they were very much drawn

and they seem very compatible to each other. However, problems and incompatibility to

certain things came in on the 2nd year of their relationship. Clementine, decided to have

her memories with her boyfriend Joel be erased by a fictional hospital named Lacuna,

responsible for the erasure of all the memories of Clementine with her boyfriend. This

portrays the nature of human, humans are capable of logical thinking and reasoning. But

no matter how many times they wander in the footsteps of their lost memories they can

nevr capture them. This also relates our topic in philosophy as God being the great person

and his divine command theory that it is only through God’s grace that they are given a

second chance to make themselves whole again. No one can control our body, soul and

mind. That is why it was shown in the movie that even though Lacuna successfully

erased the memories of the protagonists of the story, part of them seem to really know

each other. We cannot run from our shortcomings in life, we just need to accept wherever

life leads us.

A line from the main character Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) “Here’s what I

think theater is: It’s the beginning of thought, it’s the truth not yet spoken. It’s what a man

feels sfter he’s been clocked in the jaw. It’s love, in all its messiness. And I want all of us,

players and patron alike, to soak in the communal bath of it- thr mikvah, as the Jews call

it. We’re all in the same water, after all. We’re soaking in the menstrual blood and

nocturnal emissions. This is what I want to give to the people”. The director of this

movie, Kaufman, explored the contours of the human barin, mining its potential for love,

lust, memory, anxiety, creativity and deterioration. The movie portrays various neuroses,

maladies, and relationship problems to say nothing of the terrifying unexpected arrival of

death. Caden was an amateur director, has a daughter and a distant wife. After

unproductive attempts to save their marriage, Adele her wife, decided to pack up for

Germany taking only their daughter with her. Caden’s pychological distress has begun to

manifest in a completely physical breakdown. The movie was very complicated

especially with the philosophical concept of the viewers and the philosophical idea of the

writer. However, it was still able to give life lessons to all of the people experiencing a

hard time coping up with the negativities life can offer.

The movie looks unltimately outward, derived from one man’s problems a much broader

and more philosophical assessment of what it means to be human.it may not be

universally appealing as it shows but it is very applicable to a broad spectrum of feelings

and experiences that everyone goes through. With its dead ends and fictionla fits of

inspiration, all in a messy and half pretentious search for some kind of truth; as a

religious parable- God who has a hand in everything but doesn’t necessarily have a grand

design; as a terrifying portrait of a man in declins, hurting toward death with an acute

sense of loss and regret. The moment Caden lose his family was the center of the movie,

showing every decision he makes in his personal life. And on the time Caded visited her

daughter in Germany, he could no longer distinguish the very sweet kid years ago. Her

daughter was already a tattoed, bitter, German lesbian who’s been widly misinformed

about his offenses. Late in the film, a eulogist says it all out on the table: “There are a

million little strings attached to every choce you make. You can destroy your life

everytime you choose. But maybe you won’t know for 20 years and you may never ever

trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. It was an eye-opener to

many individual who is suffering from distress. This gives an idea to people that anyone

having this challenge cannot really think well sometimes. An opportunity for the people

behind them to extend wider understanding and care.

The movie portrays a merciless killer named “Chigurh”. It was a story that I can relate in

our class discussion about prima facie duties, highlighting the mot stringent duties has to

be followed.. In the movie, Llewelyn Moss wanted to escape to protect the satchel full of

money. His intention was for the safety of the money, however it gets complicated

because there were other people that were after for the money. In this case, for Llewelyn,

the most stringent duty was to protect the money from those people who has negative

plans with the money. That is why Llewelyn was able to kill many people just to keep the

satchel safe. The conflicting ideas between the two duties is possible to happen in any

forms of scenarios in our lives.

The story of the movie “No Country for Old Men” shows that our society is built upon a

foundation of norms, but not all indiiduals adhere to said norms, some are outliers. If the

actions of an individual causes pain onto another, society defines that the normal reaction

for that individual would be to exhibit a state of empathy. But this is not always the case,

as there are those who do not feel or exhibit the normal psychological reactions to

differing scenarios. Therefore Chirurh, understanding his unconventional sociopathic self,

allows him to create an impersonal persona which provides the necessary facade to

interact in society, contributing to individuation, something that is already achieved at the

onset. Chigurh further demonstates individuation through the understanding and the

acceptance of the more sadistic portion of his psyche, his shadow. Chigurh facilitates his

shadow by holding his priciple to the extreme like killing anyone who he feels are

obstacles in his path, allowing him to perform remorseless action. Chigurh, whose

ideologies are already silidifed in the sense that other individuals have now come in his

way and are held accountable. The idea of this story has a connection to the concept of

human nature, that, human nature is evil it was visibly showed in the film how merciless

Chigurh was to anyone who comes his way. This also portrayed the black horse of certain

individual, what he/she is capable of doing. I also learned from this story that morality is

defined by someone’s experiences and life learnings. Other people view an action as

morally right while others see it as the opposite. The film portrays the differences in the

ways of thinking of human being. To conclude everything, this story is an awareness for

everybody that a certain person is capable of performing malevolent acts towards us.