Movies about memory aren't terribly common, but they're not unfamiliar either, possibly because many of them have been good and seem to stand out in one way or another. Most of them focus on the academic side of examining memory -- what is it, is it tangible, and can it be manipulated? In particular, manipulation of memory has been the primary preoccupation -- think of the grand-daddy of the genre, Rashomon, which was about how different people shaped their own versions of the same story to suit their purposes. Total Recall was about making a direct correlation between memory and reality -- that reality doesn't exist except as memory, and Memento echoed Rashomon's theme by suggesting our whole lives are a product of selectively controlled memories.

These films are effective, but they also happen to place memory at the mercy of the protagonists -- people shape their memories to direct their emotions toward a desired state, usually happiness or fulfillment. What we've seen less of is an exploration of memory as emotion itself; that is, memory isn't used to control emotions but rather the opposite is true -- emotions dictate our memories and often form the heart of the things we recall. We remember sights, sounds, and smells because they remind us of a feeling, and that connection can make those memories stronger than others. It's the difference between remembering a wonderful day and having to memorize something. One happens naturally, the other is forced.

Those memories you didn't control -- the ones that formed without you having to think about them -- those are the ones Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is about. It's essentially a sci-fi story, presenting the idea of a secret technology that allows people to erase certain memories, and using it to drive its concept -- a man decides to have memories of an ex-girlfriend erased, only to find that, during the process, he's changed his mind. What may catch the viewer by surprise is how unbelievably harrowing the movie's execution of that concept is -- as the memories that are being erased go from the bad ones to the good ones, the man, one Joel Barish (Jim Carrey, simply excellent here), tries to escape the wipeout in his head by bringing his ex-girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet, channelling Drew Barrymore), to memories she didn't originally belong in. But as the work of the memory-wiping technicians (Mark Ruffalo and Tom Wilkinson) continues, escape becomes futile, and Joel is forced to watch his memories vanish into nothingness. Witnessing it is one of the scariest experiences I've ever had.

Joel thinks he can regain happiness by wiping Clementine's existence from his head, but he doesn't count on the fact that many of those memories are precious. They are connections to feelings, placed there during ecstatic moments of love, joy, and hope. But they are also complemented by the bad memories of anger, disgust, and contempt. Either way, it may be the only instance I can recall of a movie tying remembered moments directly to emotion, thereby also tying them to a person's humanity. By sucking that well dry, the memory-wipers leave Joel and their other clients with a void that must be, once again, refilled with those emotions, both savory and unsavory. There are several of these victims in the movie, and each one of them can be found retreading the path that lead to their now-erased memories. If we are our memories, it's because so much of who we are as feeling-experiencing people can be mapped by them.

This is wondrous work by director Michel Gondry and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (their second collaboration, after Human Nature). The film is a perfect blend of their sensibilities -- Gondry's visual inventiveness and Kaufman's mindbending conceptualizing are made for each other. Kaufman has already given us glimpses into what goes on inside a man's head in his collaborations with director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), and the trip inside Joel's brain is similar to the wild ride that caps Malkovich, when various characters romp thorugh Malkovich's memories. Gondry takes every advantage of Eternal Sunshine's premise to fill the frames with his eye-popping creativity, honed from his work directing the music videos of Björk, Kylie Minogue, and the White Stripes. Particularly during the attempted escape sequences, where Joel leads Clementine to moments in his childhood, Gondry's visuals play with the notion of memory as an exploding force, populated with objects overlapping from one time period to another, unable to contain itself as a graspable entity, always shaky and in danger of being lost in a corner, or of having its pieces scattered beyond organization, in the mind.

The look and feel of the movie contain several terrifying moments depicting the destruction of Joel's memories all around him -- people disappear, walls crumble, books on the shelves turn colorless, and faces distort. But nothing was more frightening than the sight of Clementine being pulled away, moment after moment. And here's how we see that Joel is at the mercy of his memories -- that his very being depends on the foundation they form. Love becomes memory, hate becomes memory; stored instances of comfort, fear, intimacy, dread, all form the pieces of the human soul. This is the most emotional movie I've watched in a while because it reveals the true, priceless value of memories, and makes their loss worthy of panic. It connects them to the core of emotional existence, and that is an admirable feat.

(Released by Focus Features and rated "R" for language, some drug use and sexual content.)

Review also posted at www.windowtothemovies.com.