Another warning: no spoiler boxes while discussing a specific plot point!
While Joel is desperately trying to “keep” his memories while they are being erased, he has discussions with Clementine as to how to hide in forgotten memories, etc.
Finally, when all is about lost, Clementine tells him to “meet me in Montauk.”
The next day, as Joel is on his way to work (now remembering nothing about Clementine) he suddenly has the overwhelming urge to ditch work and go to Montauk, where he meets up with Clementine (again) for the first time.
Here’s my question:
I understand why Joel has gone to Montauk, as that memory of “meet me in Montauk” remained in his subconscious. Fine. But why has Clementine gone to Montauk?
The “discussions” between Joel and Clementine regarding hiding from the memory erasures were all in Joel’s mind. Clementine had had the memory erasure procedure the week before. The real Clementine would know nothing in any way of what “discussions” Joel had in his own mind with his memory of Clementine. So why did she visit this beach in the off-season on the same day that Joel went out there?
The message as I understood it is something like real love is meant to be and the true lovers will find each other regardless of our scientific memory manipulations. This is mirrored in the newly established relationship between Tom Wilkenson and Kirsten Dunst. I would have understood if Joel ran across Clementine at the bookstore or something. But I see no reason why she would have gone to Montauk.
Well, maybe a little… that is a significant location for them, as it is where they met. In her dates with Elijah Wood, she does seem to have the urge to go to other locations that were significant to her Joel relationship. But those locations were important to her before… that’s why she brought Joel to them. Their meeting in Montauk, however, was at a mutual friend’s party. Without those friends there, why would she have gone there? Could she have tried to back out as Joel did during her erasure procedure… and done the same thing as Joel did? If so, that’s a hellova coincidence, that she would have chosen the same place AND shown up on the same day (especially as she didn’t even know Joel was going to have his memories erased).
My impression is that Clementine has lingering memories of Joel in her subconcious. When Patrick says things out of Joel’s journal at the places Joel said them, she gets a nagging feeling that things are just wrong, even though the words and the place are right. She goes to Montauk, somehow remembering that she went there a few times and liked it, even if she doesn’t know exactly why.
Yeah, but it relies on a hell of a coincidence. I mean, if Patrick hadn’t been using all of those old memories, Clementine probably wouldn’t have been wigging out the way she was, and even though the Clem in his head told Joe to meet her in Montauk, the real Clem wouldn’t have been there. That’s the point the OP’s trying to get to, I think.
Either way, who knows how many times he would have wondered off to Montauk had he not met her there that first day? Basically, I don’t really know, but perhaps it was all just fate, and no matter how Patrick went about it, Clementine would have ended up in Montauk that day…it was fated in the stars, perhaps? I mean, he was the only boyfriend to ever buy her a piece of jewelry she liked, and all.
Exactly.
But sometimes you need a hell of a coincidence.
It seemed to me that Clemitine was sentient in his mind. That because of his deep relationship and his greater knowledge of her that the mind version of her was sentient. (to a degree)
Well Joel wanted to remember Clem, but he couldn’t, and his mind came up with one last thing for him to hang on to, which was the idea of meeting her at Montauk, and that stuck with him, and Clem had her urge to go to Montauk during the night when Patrick came to see her and she was wigging out and started saying, “Go dancing with me, come to Montauk with me, no come to the Charles with me.” She went to the Charles and Patrick started repeating what Joel said the first time they went, and she wigged out and said “I need to go home.” I guess the next morning she was still feeling wigged out and restless, so she went to Montauk to satisfy the urge to get out and try to get away from herself for a bit.
So they both wound up in the place where they met even though the odds were against it, but it’s kind of like if a normal couple broke up, and then the day before Valentines day, for no particular reason, they both wander around and wind up in the same place, a place they used to go. Somehow they both came up with the notion to go to this place on this day. They didn’t expect to see each other, but deep down each of them had a little hope that the other might happen to be there. Neither one would really admit that’s the reason they went, because it would be so foolish to think the other had the same notion or that the other even cared. Then when they meet there, they see that they are more of like mind than they thought and maybe they should give it another go. Neither one would have felt it strongly enough to call the other, but the fact that they both went to this place on that day makes them think there’s a chance. It’s the same for Clem and Joel, except that their reasons for going are more complicated and hidden from themselves. Because of the procedures they had, neither of them knows that deep down they are going to Montauk because it is where they met someone, and neither of them really knows why they feel so screwed up on that particular day, but they are both there for the same reason. If they both had their memories, they would still say “was this a coincidence, or a sign we should be together?”
I don’t think it’s such an improbable meeting. They were both drawn to the place for some reason they couldn’t explain, and if they hadn’t met the first time like they did, they would probably have kept coming back until they did. Plus, it was on Valentine’s Day, when folorn people pine for love lost. What better place to be morose than the place you found happiness, even if you don’t quite remember it?
Lacuna processed over 200 hundred couples who failed to meet up later at their “special place”. Those didn’t get a movie made about them.
But I’m going with the assumption of a previous talk between them about going to Montauk for SVD just before breaking up. A wisp of which was retained by both.
Do we know that? I mean, sure they had plenty of clients, but how does it mention many of them being mutual former romantic partners? Certainly in the waiting room, when Joel had his bags of “Clem-memory” stuff, the people with him were not looking to erase former romantic partners. The one on his left was looking to erase a pet, and the one on his right had some sort of sports trophy - I assumed (though granted, not necessarily a valid assumption) that he’s erasing the memory of a child of his.
But I do agree with the other posters in this thread. The reason Clem got the idea to go to Montauk was Patrick. He was feeding her stuff he learned from Joel’s journal. And it was hardly coincidence - he was doing it on that very night that Joel was being wiped, which followed closely on the heels of Joel’s meeting the wiped Clem with Patrick in the bookstore.
Maybe Clementine went through the exact same thing that Joel did: a horrible regret part-way through the procedure. Both hers and Joel’s procedures would end the same way: the two of them standing on a beach in Montauk on the first day they met. If SHE wanted to remember HIM, I bet she’d tell herself to go to Montauk, too.
*23skidoo: excellent take. I’ll be watching carefully regarding the OP the next time I see it, and if nothing turns up, I’ll side with 23skidoo’s suggestion.
As to to the first part of my previous post:
I was just highlighting how you have to accept certain improbable things in some films/novels/etc. in order to have an interesting story. The writer’s justification for putting in such events is basically “It could happen, so I’ll write a story about it happening to someone. A story about those that haven’t had anything improbable happen to them ->is far less interesting<-.” (Which was my whole point, ahem.) OTOH, some people get carried away and too many implausibles get thrown in. (Or, worst of all, the same improbable event happens over and over. Certain “acclaimed” TV shows suffer from this.)
Except she had the procedure done about a week or so (?) earlier than he did, so why would she have ended up at Montauk on the same day that he went?
No, I think it was Patrick re-introducing the old memories that made her go there. And that happened the same night that Joel was getting the procedure done to him, so they both went to Montauk the same day.
I suppose I’d have to see it to make a fair judgement, but I’m glad they left this out. Of course we can assume that the events in the movie could easily happen any number of times, but I’d rather assume it than be explicitly told. Besides, I like the fact that the first mention of the erasure or Lacuna is the little yellow note saying, “CLEMENTINE has had JOEL erased from her memory.” It gives us a nice, surreal moment to figure out what’s going on.