Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is a science-fiction film about a heartbroken Joel Barish who learns that his girlfriend, Clementine Kruczynski, has undergone a procedure to have her memories of him erased by a medical company called Lacuna. After this discovery, he decides to also have his memories of her erased.

In order to have the operation, Lacuna requires him to collect all of his belongings that remind him of Clementine. A map of his mind is created by scanning his brain as he looks at the objects he collected and then he is instructed to go to sleep. While he sleeps, they will remove his memories of her and the following day he will not remember anything related to Clementine.

During the operation, he has dream sequences in which he relives the memories he had with his girlfriend. Upon remembering a cherished memory that he realizes that doesn’t want to have deleted, he decides that he doesn’t want to go through with the operation anymore. However, despite his best attempts to preserve memories of Clementine, the Lacuna employees make sure to delete all of the memories.

One of Lacuna technicians is revealed to have essentially performed identity theft, as they are trying to be Clementine’s new boyfriend by using all of Joel’s memories and Joel’s intended gift to Clementine that was never gifted. We also find out that the Lacuna doctor had erased the memories of the Lacuna staffer who usually works the front desk at the office, supposedly to deal with the fact that they were in love with each other despite the doctor already having a wife and kids.

All of this comes to a head the following morning, as the Lacuna staffer finds out that they had deleted their memories of the doctor and sends every patient the record of the memories that they had erased. Clementine forces the Lacuna technician to leave, and gets back together with Joel, although their reunion is troubled at first due to the recorded tapes that they made criticizing each other before the memories were erased.

I really liked how the film explores the different ways the memory deletion affects the characters, and what happens after the characters find out that their memories had been deleted. We also find out how society changes as a result of the technology, as we learn how Lacuna’s services are especially demanded in February on account of Valentine’s Day. As much as I dislike the Lacuna technician’s character, I also appreciated the perspective of how the technology could be abused. I wish the film examined more impacts of the technology, but even so I think it still counts as a paradigm shift movie.

There’s also a very cool shot in the movie where Joel is recounting a memory that happened recently, and he’s present in the memory narrating what is happening. As the flashback ends, he walks down the hallway in the bookstore and all the lights turn off in sequence behind him as he goes through a door, re-entering the room where he was telling his friends about the memory.