How Inside Out is Really Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for Kids
Inside Out — Pixar’s latest (and I’d dare submit “greatest,” despite the rhyme) — sent many adult-size children home weeping in fits of joy/sadness. The animated feature also had many totally recalling its movie forefather Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And rightfully so.
Google “Inside Out” + “Eternal Sunshine” and an array of reviews and blogs pop up that have already made this connection. (We won’t even mention the obvious nod to “Herman’s Head” — which split emotions into characters back in the ‘90s. Before it was cool.) Here’s why.
⚠ Spoilers will abound. Please go watch these movies → then read this. ⚠
Inside Out follows the life of Riley, an 11-year-old girl, whose world gets flipped/turned upside-down when her family moves to San Francisco. We see the inner workings of this tween’s mind as told through the adventures of her personified emotions: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust.
The filmmakers set these characters in a mission control-like Headquarters which boasts a Star Trek-like control panel where Joy is usually at the helm. Here memories (glowing orbs, that can replay crystal ball-style) roll in on a bowling alley ball return-like track throughout each day then are shipped to “Long Term.” The benchmark moments are put into a special device that holds the “core memories” — which power aspects of her personality (shown as islands like Goofball, Friendship, Hockey, Honesty and Family).
In Eternal Sunshine, Joel discovers that his ex-girlfriend Clementine has undergone a procedure to erase him from her memory. In a fit of desperation, he too signs up for the mnemonic lobotomy. Once “under,” Joel realizes he may have been too hasty and tries to hide away some memories in recesses of his mind.
Director Michel Gondry — via Charlie Kaufman’s script — uses memories as visual playgrounds and the unconscious-but-somehow-conscious Joel jumps and leaps through his own recall, causing trouble for the technicians administering the procedure.
Both of the works play on the construct of our minds as settings. They also acknowledge how our memories shape our personalities/lives and how very fragile they are. (A moment of heartbreak in Riley’s life causes some of her Personality Islands to collapse into a Memory Dump abyss. While in Joel’s mind, as memories are deleted, we see books on shelves going blank, faces being blurred and houses and scenery being deconstructed.)
Inside Out takes a more fantastical approach (which makes sense for kids), setting up the mind in one landscape and we follow both the world and events outside of Riley’s head and within. Whereas the adult-aimed Eternal Sunshine just barely hops the science fiction border, setting most of its fictional procedure and story in the map of Joel’s mind as he sleeps.
The Pixar flick also alludes to things like “Train of Thought” (which is an actual mode of transportation), Riley’s imaginary childhood friend Bing Bong (an “Imagination Land” castaway who roams her “Long Term Memory” bank lifting old memories) and “Abstract Thought” (a chamber you must watch to fully experience). And dreams, by the way, are the products of a Hollywood studio-style lot.
Kaufman and Gondry’s film plays with the idea that memory and certain emotional associations are plotted across the maps of our mind: Clementine tells Joel to hide her in a memory of “humiliation” and “shame.” He eventually relents in his attempts to hold onto her and just enjoys the remains of the time he has left to live in the past moments. Her parting words, though, lead him to her once again in real life.
Inside Out (like Eternal Sunshine) ultimately posits that memories can (and perhaps should) exist within us as mixes of emotions, they can change over time and even be lost. Eternal Sunshine further suggests (as Inside Out does to an extent) that our memories — whether good or bad — and the people we share them with are part of us. And even if you could delete memories, you cannot simply erase how you feel and who you are.
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