From Flower Vase to Film Emperor in Hollywood

“… … When I was little, I thought I was ugly.”

“Ha, I can't believe I'm actually crying here.”

“Sometimes, people just don't know how lonely a child is, like you're just not important.”

“When I was eight, I had so many toys and dolls, but my favorite was an ugly doll, and I named her Clementine.”

“I kept yelling at her, ‘You can't be so ugly, you have to be pretty,’ it's strange, it's like if I had the magic to change her, I could change myself too.”

Inside the blanket fort, Joel quietly gazed at the battered Clementine, he raised his hand and gently wiped away the scalding tears from her cheeks.

“You're beautiful.” Joel murmured.

Clementine, “Joel, don't leave me.”

“You're beautiful. You're beautiful.”

However, the light dimmed, and Joel suddenly woke up, trying his best to grab Clementine, muttering to himself, “Please, please, please let me keep this memory.”

This part, just this part.

The light disappeared, and the world plunged into darkness.

Without pause, without time to grieve, without even time to breathe, the next memory came—

Clementine with red hair, bright and vibrant red, the two of them chasing and running on the Charles River in winter, laughter echoing in their chests.

Finally, they lay on the ice, counting the stars.

Clementine found Joel's right hand and held it tightly, their fingers intertwined.

“I can die without regrets now.” Joel said, “I'm just… too happy, I've never felt this way before, this is what I've been longing for.”

The next second, they were lying on a crowded street.

Then, Clementine disappeared.

Joel looked at his empty right hand, his eyes filled with confusion.

“I want to stop here.”

Joel looked up at the sky, clasped his hands together in devout prayer, and shouted at Stan and Patrick.

“Stop, I want to stop here!”

“Can you hear me? I don't want to continue, I want to stop!”

Joel shouted, almost to the point of losing his voice, his lonely voice echoing on the Charles River—

Unfortunately, the real world was a different scene altogether.

Mary and Stan, wearing only their underwear, were… dancing on the bed where Joel was lying.

The Twist.

This scene… shouldn't be funny; but the stark contrast and huge reversal made the sadness and bitterness on the tip of his tongue swallowed in one gulp, and he was choked by saliva unexpectedly, and a chuckle escaped.

Obviously, the director did it on purpose.

In Joel's world, he was tracing the veins of memories; while in the real world, Stan and Patrick also had their troubles.

Patrick… left because his “girlfriend” was very uneasy.

Originally, Patrick had the impulse to call Clementine to Joel's apartment; anyway, Clementine had completely forgotten about Joel.

But he didn't expect Clementine to be on the verge of collapse on the other end of the phone.

Patrick rushed to Clementine's apartment and found Clementine with the seaweed hair, looking flustered and distraught.

In front of the big screen.

Blair suddenly sat up straight: This!

Karen was startled and looked at Blair with a confused expression, asking with her eyes, “What's wrong?”

Clementine was in a state of panic and fear.

When she was disappearing in Joel's memory, Clementine felt that she was also disappearing, an inexplicable emotion grabbed her heart and slowly fell, the suffocation and pain made her lose direction.

She needed to grab at a lifeline. Any lifeline.

Patrick looked at the distraught Clementine and also panicked, he didn't know what to do, so he secretly rummaged through Clementine's diary in his backpack, preparing to follow in Joel's footsteps and take Clementine to the Charles River.

Perhaps, Patrick really liked Clementine, but he was now liking Clementine in Joel's way, his body still contained Joel's soul.

And it was the perfect Joel in Clementine's memory.

He tried to get rid of Joel's shadow, but he still followed in Joel's footsteps again and again, he used Joel's words, Joel's gifts, Joel's methods to pursue Clementine, occupying the nest like a cuckoo to fill the void.

However, Patrick had no choice, this was the only way he knew.

Patrick wasn't the only one trapped in his emotional troubles, there was also Stan.

Stan liked Mary.

This was a fact, and he had never tried to hide it.

So, when Mary appeared at the door of Joel's apartment, Stan, who was wholeheartedly focused on work, put the work in front of him behind him, not only allowing Patrick to go and save his girlfriend, but also partying with Mary himself.

Pizza. Alcohol. Music.

Stan and Mary enjoyed themselves to the fullest, Stan did not continue to sit in front of the computer to monitor the entire operation, which gave Joel a chance—

Clementine was disappearing, but the speed of disappearance was not as fast as before.

Clementine, who had disappeared on the Charles River the previous second, then reappeared.

Joel looked at the regained Clementine, ecstatically rushed up and hugged Clementine tightly, using all his strength.

At this moment, he finally understood.

This is the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there is no so-called perfection, love that is far away from pain and struggle cannot be eternally hot and eternally brilliant, the brilliance and intensity of happiness are precisely because of its fragility, incompleteness, and fleetingness, but as long as that ray of eternal sunshine is still treasured deep in the memory, it can forever preserve happiness and illuminate the direction of life.

“Run. Clem, run!”

Joel shouted at Clementine.

However, Clementine didn't understand what was happening, and laughed as she looked at Joel's serious face.

“Haha, run on the ice? Haven't you fallen down enough?”

It was this scene, a simple and unadorned scene, that struck Blair's heart hard—

Joel had finally woken up, and finally realized the importance of memory.

Turning her head, Blair saw Karen, who was crying and sobbing.

Blair was startled.

But Karen had no time to pay attention to these things, covering her mouth and shedding tears.

Blair didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and the tears that hadn't had time to come out shrank back, and she looked back at the big screen, quietly clenching her fists.

Joel had finally realized that he was being stupid, but was it too late now? Could he turn the tide? Could he stop the deletion of memories?

If this were a Hollywood-style commercial film, what should follow would be the last-second rescue scene; but Blair had a strong premonition that Charlie Kaufman wouldn't do that.

Sure enough, Joel grabbed Clementine's hand and ran away quickly, shuttling through different memory scenes, trying to find the doctor at Lacuna, Inc.—

As long as he found the doctor, he could stop all this.

He had to stop all this.