#also I haven't watched the movie for years so I think I'm remembering the empty-beach-scene correctly

[harbingrs]

Wait wait wait what story?

I don't know if it's that good a story, but it is a neat technology retrospective:

I've seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind many times, but I've never seen the ending.

When I started university in 2009, I had a 5-hour commute each day. 2.5 hours each way, by bus and train. You couldn't spend the time "on your phone" when your phone was something like this - Bluetooth, no WiFi, 20MB storage.

Mobile data was ridiculously expensive, and reception during the trip was patchy. If you were going to be On Your Phone you were basically playing Snake for five hours.

So I'd convert movies for my little iPod Nano to watch on the way. If I didn't torrent them, I'd get the files from a friend via a portable hard drive.

My go-to was watching episodes of Dexter, but if I hadn't downloaded & converted anything new, I fell back on watching one of a few staple movies I kept on there.

One of those was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But something was wrong with the original file or had gone wrong converting it, because the ending was glitched out and unwatchable. The movie cut out right when Joel goes back to Montauk, and the beach is empty.

It introduced a whole new level of ambiguity - have Joel and Clementine erased each other forever? Do they find each other again? Are they permanently passing ships in the night? If they find each other, does it go well? Does it go badly? What is the actual message of this film? Who knows, because I sure didn't!

Over time, that became my preferred way to watch the movie. I felt like actually seeing the ending was somehow going to spoil what I loved about it most. And at the same time, I knew my glitched-up experience of it was completely unique (unless someone just happened to walk out of the cinema or turn the movie off at that point).

But it was my own personal viewing experience, and it had the same kind of meaning to me as an intentionally ambiguous ending. It may not have been the authorial intent, but it felt poignant to me.

It meant I was imagining all kinds of possibilities. My favourite 'assumed ending' was that Joel is inexplicably drawn back to Montauk - and Clem isn't there. She isn't on the train. She was never going to be there again.

The Clementine who said 'Meet me in Montauk' was in his mind, after all - a reflection that he was still trying to hold on. The Clementine who was fighting to save their memories together was a figment of his imagination. She's already long gone.

Admittedly, I have since looked up what happens at the end of the movie. I still haven't watched it, but I've seen the plot summary. I don't think the ending is as good as my version, even if it is more optimistic.