Awe inspiring, undefinable, beautiful

Rating: 10/10 (11 May 2015)

"What if you could live forever?" - Every decade or so there are a few films that are so challenging, so intangible and so personally felt by their creators that they are often unfairly and ignorantly dismissed as "too hard to understand" or "don't make any sense". Nonsense. The joy for me in these type of films is exactly that, the deep contemplation and soul shifting thought and feeling that comes along with viewing something that makes you feel that certain way. Life itself almost never makes sense, so why should art? In any case, this is my favourite Darren Aronofsky film, and in my top five of all time. It is an undefinable tone poem which diligently follows the path of two souls bound to each other by cosmic love (Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weiscz). They cross cross each other's trajectories through 1300 Spain during the brutal Inquisition, through to 2002 Midwest America, and on into a future so far in the distance that consciousness has become a dreamy, spherical bubble floating eerily through a vast expansive universe. I myself don't understand much of what is going on, in any traditional sense, but that doesn't stop me from loving every frame of what I see, and letting the atmosphere, performances and themes transport me into the elemental, affecting way the film operates. Aronofsky has ingeniously avoided CGI by filming microscopic materials floating in Petri dishes, and superimposing the images over his scenes set in outer space. The effect is mesmerizing. Clint Mansell provides an almost holy score, which is just haunting to here alongside the images we see on screen. Jackman and Weiscz are the beating heart of it, and are both incredibly moving, especially in a climactic, impossible to describe ending which will glue your jaw to the floor. A true gem, doesn't feel as much like a movie, just the cosmic forces of nature and the universe at work.