Melodrama overflows in movie

The story is incoherent and the acting leaves much to be desired.
By COLIN COVERT
(MINNEAPOLIS) STAR TRIBUNE
"The Fountain" is the feel-bored movie of the year.
One would think a trippy-looking film combining 16th-century conquistadors, eternal romance, contemporary hospital drama and far-future space travel would snag our attention somewhere along the line. Instead, writer/director Darren Aronofsky has created a mournful marathon of metaphysical monotony. In trying to go everywhere, it goes nowhere.
The incoherent story dissolves under inspection like cotton candy in a carwash, but some strands seem clear enough. Cancer researcher Dr. Tommy Creo (Hugh Jackman) is working himself toward a breakdown as he races to find a cure for his wife, Izzi (Rachel Weisz), who has an inoperable brain tumor. Could she benefit from the untested substance that Tommy has found in the sap of a rain-forest tree?
Izzi has written a novel about a dashing Spanish adventurer (Jackman, with long hair) seeking the fabled Tree of Life in South America for his Queen (Weisz, with long hair). Reborn as an immortal space traveler (Jackman again, now bald), Creo voyages to a distant nebula inside a snow globe, where he eats bark, practices yoga and weeps over visions of his Izzi, hoping to be reunited at the end of his journey.
Or, given the plot's mysterious, millennia-leaping design, maybe it's all Tommy's dream. Throughout the film, he repeatedly jerks awake with a shock. Many drowsing viewers will do the same.
Falls short
To be fair, the film has a distinct look to it, with a honey-gold glow suffusing each painstakingly composed frame. The performances are something else, though. Weisz spends most of her screen time as one of those beatific terminal-ward ingenues that exist only in Hollywood fantasies, all dimples and flawless skin tone and final-days wisdom. Like her novel, handwritten with perfect calligraphy and no cross-outs, Izzi is too exquisite to be believed. It's a part that asks for posing, not acting, and Weisz complies.
While Jackman's performance has moments of undeniable power, it can't survive Aronofsky's ADHD approach to storytelling. If there were an acting award for Most Photogenic Weeping in a Close-Up, however, he'd be a sure thing.
The film's goal appears to be enlightening us all on the unchanging, absolute nature of humanity's eternal struggle for hope, love and glory. That's a high aim, but bogged down by its overpowering ambitions, the film falls far short of the mark.