Memory
is often considered the foundation in building a relationship. Feelings grow
because we remember—faces, voices, small habits, and the history that slowly
forms together. However, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Little
Fish ask a different question: what if those memories slowly disappear?
Will the feeling still remain?
In Eternal
Sunshine, Joel and Clementine choose to erase each other from their
memories. Not because the memories are not valuable, but because they are
simply too painful to keep. They want to be free from the burden of the past.
Yet the more the memories are erased, the clearer one thing becomes: love does
not give up so easily. Even when memories begin to fade, there is a push that
is hard to explain—a desire to return, to hold on, to not completely let go.
Meanwhile,
Little Fish presents a different world. Human memory slowly erodes
because of a mysterious disease. There is no conscious choice like in the
previous film, only a reality that is forced without the chance to refuse.
Couples struggle to maintain their relationships in the middle of forgetting
that comes without warning. Love becomes fragile, not because feelings fade,
but because memory can no longer be trusted. Even so, this film shows something
interesting: even when forgetting, the body and heart keep searching.
These
two films seem to say that memory indeed holds stories, but love lives in a
deeper place. It does not only exist in the head, but seeps into habits,
gestures, and emotional impulses that often appear without needing explanation.
Like instinct, love knows where to return without needing direction.
Interestingly,
both Eternal Sunshine and Little Fish never romanticize
forgetting. Losing memories remains painful and leaves emptiness. But in the
middle of that destruction, there is still something that cannot be completely
erased: attachment. Even when someone no longer remembers who they love, their body
still responds. There is a vague sense of safety, an attraction that is
difficult to explain, and a need to remain close.
From
here another perspective about love appears. Loving someone is not only about
remembering the past together, but about how someone’s presence has changed who
we are. Memories may be erased, but those changes remain. And from there, love
slowly finds its way back.
In
the end, these two films deliver the same idea in a way that is both gentle and
painful: the people we truly care about never completely leave us. Even when
memory betrays us, love still works quietly—searching, drawing closer, and
finding its way back.
However,
the meaning would be different if what truly disappears is the love itself.
Because when the feeling is gone, the memories that remain no longer have a
place to return to.
(Aluna
Uwie)
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