Joel’s childhood

05Jul07

The memory of Clementine that Joel’s subconscious interacts with suggests that he somehow hid her in other memories in which she did not belong. The apparent idea behind this was that this would preserve Joel’s memories of Clementine from the erasure procedure. Joel therefore conjures memories from his early childhood (the scenes in his mother’s kitchen), and when this tactic fails, his memory of Clementine urges him to hide her “in his humiliation.”

These turn out to be scenes in which his mother walks in on him masturbating and where bullies pressure him into hitting a dead bird with a hammer. The latter scene was meant to express a common early memory, when children are forced by others to do things they don’t want to, something Jim Carrey revealed in an interview included as an extra on the DVD.

Hiding Clementine causes problems with the memory-erasing procedure, and leads Dr. Mierzwiak to come over to Joel’s apartment to help Stan, which leads to Mary’s discovery of her past relationship with the doctor. In turn, this precipitates Mary’s decision to mail to all of Lacuna’s clients their files (which leads to Joel and Clementine discovering that they have had a tumultuous past relationship).

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