eternal sunshine of the spotless mind is a strange, sad, and beautiful journey through the mind of one man, joel barish, who determines to (and then, fervently, not to) forget his love for a quirky, compelling and often troublesome woman named clementine. an inverted love story by design and yet so much more than this, the story delves into the nature of identity; and how memory and experience--good and bad--shape us as individuals. joel wrestles, briefly, with whether he'd give up his painful memories of clementine---until he realizes too late his naiveté--that the bad experiences are intertwined with the good; that they in fact are as important and necessary as the good and in fact often lead one on a path to things overwhelmingly fulfilling and wonderful. through parallel plot lines the film at the last touches on inevitability---with one disgruntled tell-all employee and an open-ended finale which hints at the very real possibility of a happy ending, in spite of joel and clementine's mutual, inherent and essentially human flaws.
"how happy is the blameless vestal's lot! the world forgetting, by the world forgot. eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd". Alexander Pope