Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman is one of the most original and audacious voices in Hollywood today.
With Being John Malkovich, his feature film debut in 1999, Kaufman had delicious fun purporting to take audiences inside the mind of one of today's true maverick personalities, the irrepressible John Malkovich.
In 2002's Adaptation, Kaufman doubled the trick by creating a fictitious brother for himself and then exploring both siblings' thoughts and desires.
Now comes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, another mind-bending excursion into memory, thoughts and desires.
It's about shy guy Joel Barish (Jim Carrey), who falls in love with extroverted Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), a girl who has more mood swings than hair colours.
Clementine proves too emotionally taxing for Joel so he checks into a clinic that promises to erase selective memories.
Joel wants all traces of Clementine purged from his life -- or at least he thinks he does until the memories start sliding away.
In desperation, Joel tries to fight against the memory-deleting process and to keep Clementine in his heart and head.
As with Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, this is one clever premise and Kaufman explores it with such wild abandon it's never completely clear in which order we're observing Joel's dilemma.
It's a bit like a romantic comedy version of the fractured story telling in 21 Grams.
The other trick Kaufman plays on his audiences is that he has much of the film take place in Joel's mind.
This means the Clementine we see is Joel's version of her, so it's bound to be distorted.
Joel is not completely humourless but he's no Ace Ventura or Bruce Almighty, which means Carrey is remarkably subdued.
He's the straight man to Winslet's wacky eccentric, but even she is tame compared to the staff of the memory clinic.
As the receptionist Mary, Kirsten Dunst is so effervescent you expect her to erupt at any moment. She's all bounce, giggles and pure positive energy.
Mark Ruffalo's Stan is a computer geek whose libido is on a very short leash, especially when it comes to Mary.
Elijah Wood is the love-sick Patrick, who steals Joel's memories to woo Clementine for himself.
Tom Wilkinson plays the clinic's head doctor as a kind of sweet Dr. Frankenstein. He is all reassuring smiles and velvet tones, but he does have access to the switch that sends electric currents into a person's brain.
Because chronology means little to Kaufman, Spotless Mind quickly becomes a conundrum for the viewer as well as Joel.
It's best not to try to make too much sense of it but rather to let it work its quirky magic on a purely entertaining level.
Part of that magic is how well the love story works inside this bizarre little sci-fi premise.
Both Carrey and Winslet show the exuberance of infatuation and the pangs of disappointment and confusion.
It's obvious these two people are worlds apart, but when they find each other, the world they create together is better than the ones either of them originally had.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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