Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Reality is another word for what it looks like from here.

Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) is a writer who takes no interest in the expected. He does this thing with time that shuffles past, present and future. When is one the other and the other two?

Joel (Jim Carrey) is a shy guy, who finds communication with the opposite sex complicated. When he meets purple-haired Clementine (Kate Winslet) on a train, she's different, because "I'm impulsive," which means she says the first thing that comes into her head and does the craziest stuff.

You think: "A goofball and a nerd? No way!"

Clementine is as open as Saturday morning. She will scream and yell one minute and be extravagently affectionate the next. A man like Joel, who distrusts spontaneity, being a closet control freak, should have run for the hills. But there is something about this girl that reels him in. And that something might be love.

"Are you nuts?" she squeals, laughing in his face.

"It's been suggested."

Dialogue like this whiplashes the scenario into left field, not to mention the suggestion that Joel met Clementine at a beach party and they lived together for a while.

Wait one!

At this point, the infinite cunning of Kaufman's mind slips off its leash and reality becomes another word for gookdegobble.

There is a doctor (Tom Wilkinson). There is the doctor's assistant (Mark Ruffalo). There is the doctor's assistant's assistant (Elijah Wood). There is the secretary (Kirsten Dunst), who loves the doctor and sleeps with the doctor's assistant.

Who are these people?

They have a brain machine that erases memory. It's a thriving business. Seperately, Clementine and Joel make use of their services. The experience is not entirely successful.

The film is too clever by half and so beautifully played it doesn't matter. Carrey proves once more what a supeb straight actor he is and Winslet, with her zany American accent, slipping and sliding like a puppy in ketchup, has personality to burn.

The pleasure of watching these two, while trying to fit pieces of the story into some kind of order, is absorbing and profound.