The Fountain

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Year:	2006
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Darren Aronofsky
Genre:	Spiritual fantasy
Starring:	Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Ellen Burstyn
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414993/
Tagline:	What If You Could Live Forever?
Favourite line:	"Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Our skin and blood, the iron bars of confinement. But fear not. All flesh decays. Death turns all to ash. And thus, death frees every soul."

Darren Aronofsky's most confounding work to date, this one will severely stretch those synapses.

The plot:
Three storylines run in parallel, each seemingly featuring the same main players, though the story played out spans more than a thousand years of existence.
Story 1: In Medieval times, the Spanish are the dominant force in Europe. A knave is issued a quest by the princess he secretly loves: find the Tree of Life, as spoken of in Genesis, that Spain may conquer the world for, with the power of the tree's sap, no army could be stopped; wounds would be healed instantly, limbs would regenerate and Death itself would be conquered.
Story 2: Present day, and an experimental scientist is working with animals to discover the cure to a debilitating illness. He has a vested interest: his wife is suffering from the disease, and she doesn't have long to live.
Story 3: Not really a story, more a sequence of visuals. In the far future, the spiritual form of a man sits beneath the Tree of Life, positioned in a far off nebula, only just visible to the naked eye in the night sky. The nebula is encased by a bubble, allowing him to breath and, as the other two stories play out, so too is his existence affected.

Breathtakingly avant garde, this by turns baffles, bewilders and leaves you breathless.
Aronofsky is not one for making simple movies - with the possible exception of The Wrestler, though even that was pretty intense - but here he ratchets things up another notch entirely to the point that, for the first hour at least, he sorely tests the patience.
But this man is an auteur, a genuine visionary, and that patience that began to wear thin is amply rewarded in the final thirty minutes, as jaw dropping spectacle after heart-stopping scenes of beauty follow one another relentlessly. Just as you think he can't do anything more mind-bending, he lays another one on you.
A genuine work of genius, even if flawed, everyone must watch this, just be prepared to doubt yourself for a little while along the way.
Aronofsky, I love you.