The Fountain- the BEST MOVIE of the YEAR

Tom, a hairless starchild adorned in a flowing man-blouse, stands adroit at the foot of the mystical Tree of Life, encased in a bubble and shooting deep into the farthest reaches of the cosmos. He speaks to the tree, and it whispers back, "Finish it," as the spores thrive under his touch. Tom peels a portion of the bark off the tree and consumes it respectfully. This is one of three versions of Tom we meet throughout Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain".

Aronofsky's followup to the pokey indie "Pi" and his drugs-as-boogeyman horror film "Reqiuem For A Dream" is a quantum leap of an attempt, moving from the independent cellar of New York City to a story that takes its cues from 1500, the distant future and modern day to weave together a tapestry dedicated to love and loss. As his first studio effort, he's been forced to compromise, reduced to pitching a much smaller version of what he originally intended at a megabudget science fiction spectacular. He's probably better off- "The Fountain" excels not in it's science fiction wizardry but in it's intimacy and emotional immediacy. Also, the $80 million-budgeted version of the film would have starred Brad Pitt. So there's that.

Hugh Jackman is the aforementioned Tom, though he's also Tomas, a Spanish conquistador in 1500. Indebted to Spain, he leads a small group into the heart of a jungle to recover the secrets found at the same Tree of Life. He is on a mission from Queen Izabella (Rachel Weisz) to recover the ancient tree in order to tip the balance of power in sixteenth century Spain, though there's more at stake, with the Inquisition threatening to make matters a bit more complicated.

Further deepening the "Fountain" universe is the modern day Tommy, a doctor who's been experimenting on monkeys in order to develop longer lifelines for the suffering. His wife (Weisz) is slipping into the afterlife slowly as a malignant tumor threatens to obliterate her mind and can only find salvation from Tommy's possessed experimentations. He becomes duly inhabited with defeating science that he neglects the love of his luminous wife, her final days spent writing a novel called "The Fountain", a book that begins with an explorer named Tomas and ends in space at the nebula Xibulba.

"The Fountain" may appear complex and unnecessarily convoluted to the unfocused mind, but it's simply a linear story framed in a way that switches ideas and developments to the foreground and background, creating a film that is not a simple chronological journey but a tapestry of concepts, caught within a Moebius strip of bedazzling, non-CG imagery and personal, almost pornographically emotional moments. Above all, however, lingers death.

Early on, the film's thesis is revealed, as a character intones, "Our bodies are prisons for our souls" and when Tommy's modern day wife Izzi finds herself face to face with death, she acknowledges that she doesn't fear what will confront her. It's not the end for her, even if that may be Tommy in the 26th century trying to grant her a new beginning. On a superficial level, it can be construed as a cosmic interpretation of the lack of communication between the sexes, but it's really a re-affirmation of our own humanity, a chance for Tom to understand the veritable circle of life.

"The Fountain" isn't a film to emerge from immediately excited and ready for more. As it was before Spielberg and Lucas, when films were meant to be dissected for days after an initial viewing and not to be consumed in the manner of fireworks and pornography, "The Fountain" nestles in and sits, confounding conventional analysis and inviting multiple ideas and interpretations. Chances are, the customary laughs and jokes that emerge from the audience during end credits of any film today will be absent, and that is best. Enjoy "The Fountain" in silence, and realize that, perhaps, viewing this film won't be an inactive activity, but actually a process. The great ones always are.