Darren Aronofsky’s “THE FOUNTAIN”

A movie review by Dennis D. McDonald

This dizzying and perplexing movie bathes the viewer in a warm and beautiful gauze of, love, death, loss, and redemption. Forget the narrative and go with the flow. It may increase your emotional involvement if you have lost — or almost lost — someone close to you. Or if you’ve ever lost your wedding ring at a stressful time of your life.

That’s at the heart of the film and the masterful performances of Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. In one timeline she plays his wife and he, a medical researcher, struggles to find a cure for the cancer that is killing her. In another timeline he is a Spanish conquistador and she is the Queen of Spain, urging him to locate, against all odds, the Tree of Life and the secret of perpetual life. In another timeline he is a space traveler lost in a bubble of air that encases him and the Tree as together they travel through some of the most gorgeous and awe inspiring interstellar landscapes ever imagined.

But it’s not about the stories, it’s about the emotions and the feelings as the characters weave in and out of the three timelines.

My advice: avoid this film if you have a low tolerance for ambiguity.