If a man is measured by the strength of his character, is a movie character measured by the strength of the man playing him? Yesterday, I purchased "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", starring Jim Carrey, Kate Winslett, and Mark Ruffalo, among others. I'm not the biggest art house fan, but on occasion I will diverge from the usual Senor C fare, and try something a little more off kilter. Sure, it didn't hurt that countless reviews have given this flick six or more stars on a four star scale, but other people's opinions don't necessarily qualify or disqualify a movie from my To View list. I popped the DVD into my player with no preconceptions as to what I was about to see, and boy did this film ever hit a home run.

I grew up watching Jim Carrey play such outlandish characters as Fire Marshall Bill on In Living Color and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think he'd be able to play such a restrained and steady leading man. His first stab at this type of role in "The Majestic" failed to produce a major critical or box office score, so I was skeptical of at least Carrey's performance (Winslett et al, I confess, I had a bit more faith in). But from Act I, I knew this was to be a very different Jim Carrey than what I'm accustomed to. Carrey plays the role of Joel, a post break-up victim who yearns for nothing but the good old days with ex-girlfriend Clementine. Clementine, played by Kate Winslett, was Joel's one-time eccentric soul mate, who had a fetish for dressing up potatoes and changing her hair color with every turn of the season. Clementine, in an act of impulsiveness, visits a clinic that specializes in memory erasures, attempting to wipe her brain clean of any memory of Joel. In an act of equally impulsive retaliation, Joel visits the same clinic to erase his mind of Clementine. What follows is one of the most original takes on love, break-ups and the rollercoaster ride of relationships that I've ever had the pleasure of watching.

Joel and Clementine are perfect examples of the simple romantic dichotomy of 'It' feeling so right and so wrong at the same time. Unless you live in a cave and actively refrain from human interaction, this movie should immediately strike a chord, whether it be through finding love in the strangest places, recovering from a relationship that was almost unreal, or finding a connection with the simplest of dreams. Joel and Clementine's relationship was the combination of dozens of very distinct moments during the course of their courtship. We're reminded that even just one memory can make a loved one's embrace feel real again, while a single memory may also emotionally break someone still trying to outrun sorrow from the past.