Would you fall in love with the same person after erasing all your memories? The movie, "External Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", shows you:" Yes, you will." It tells a story of a pair of couple--Joule and Clementine. Actually, due to the flashback starting, I had felt confused and misunderstood the whole story. Fortunately, I found a clear clue after reading some useful comments on the Internet. So, here is the whole story. Joule and Clementine fell in love at first sight in a party on the beach. The boy, Joule, is kind of shy; but the girl, Clementine, has her own understand of this world. We can realize it from her changing and colorful hair. She has passion for almost everything in her life. However, the difference between their characteristics made them break up. Clementine impulsively decided to delete all her memory with Joule to begin her new life. After knowing this truth, Joule was so angry and disappointed that he also determined to give up their memory through an operation. The doctor collected all things related to his memory with Clementine and all stories behind these things. It turned to some points in his brain. This operation would give him a dream of all experience that they were together. The therapists would erase every point of his memory; and Joule would forget everything contained Clementine in the next morning. During the operation, Joule was forced to face all fragments of their memory and he regretted this decision. He tried to escape from the operation, but failed. The only thing he remembered in the next morning was the last sentence that Clementine told him in last night's dream: meet her in Montauk. So, he ditched work and took a train out to Montauk even though he didn't know why he wanted to do that. And then they fell in love again until both of them received a tape which recorded their complaint about each other. However, they still chose to be together at last. There is another example in this movie is that the young nurse in the hospital fell in love with the old doctor who had wife and children again after erasing their memory. On the contrary, she chose to leave after the doctor's wife told her the truth. So, even though you will always love the same person after all memory that you experienced together disappeared, the reaction after you knew your past from other person or the record may be totally different just like these two examples.
This movie shows us a chance that maybe we can erasing a painful memory. However, the consequence of this chance is hard to say. "Is erasing all traces of pain in life always a good thing? Or is emotional suffering instead an essential part of being human?" (Psychology From Inquiry to Understanding P267) From the textbook, we can understand that it is still a problem in psychological study. Until now, people already created the drug that inhibited people's adrenaline to block people from the disappointed period. At least, this drug could prevent people from remembering their traumatic experiences in a short term. Yet "this pill only dampened the effects of traumatic memories; it didn't erase them." (Psychology From Inquiry to Understanding P267)
