The Fountain

Grade: A-

Writer/director Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) has created one of the most beautiful and challenging movies of the year. It deserves to be seen on the big screen, so try to catch it before it gets chased out of the multiplexes by this year's parade of holiday fluff. The tone is a bit uneven, and there are some painfully pretentious and unintentionally funny moments. But overall this is fascinating stuff that will stick with you long after you leave the theater.

Three storylines intertwine to depict humankind's ongoing quest for immortality, as represented by the Tree of Life in the Book of Genesis. There's a modern day research doctor (Hugh Jackman) who races against time to cure his wife (Rachel Weisz) of a brain tumor. In scenes from the wife's novel-in-progress, Jackman appears as a Spanish conquistador bloodily questing for eternal life in the Mayan Empire. And in trippy outer space scenes that are suitable substitutes for LSD, a bald, Buddhist Jackman sits beneath the Tree of Life in a floating bubble. Yes it's as crazy as it sounds, but it all congeals in a way that's more spiritual than logical. I honestly don't know how to describe it.