The most visually stimulating movie of the year

Rating: 9/10 (3 December 2006)

Okay, I'm not one of those people who loves to hype up a movie, and considering the mixed reviews this one's received, there isn't, I suppose, much risk of people taking what I say too seriously.
That said, and in all seriousness, this is a fantastic piece of cinema! Darren Aronofsky, one of the most visually gifted directors working today, has created a masterwork so radically different from his previous two forays into the medium that comparing this to either his debut, "Pi," or "Requiem for a Dream" would be unfair to what this has to offer on its own. Granted, it also means that just because you liked those movies doesn't mean you'll like this one.
Aronofsky has created a complex, time-tripping story about love, obsession, life, death, and rebirth. Tom Creo is a man floating through space, with a tree, toward a dying star in the far future. He is a present day doctor who is searching for a way to reverse the effects on a chimp named Donovan, in the hope that the same can be done for his wife Izzy. He also imagines himself the protagonist in his wife's journal of a Conquistador who is sent to New Spain (Guatemala) during the Spanish Inquisition by Queen Isabella, with the mission of finding the Tree of Life.
Cutting back and forth in time, through present and future and past, and leaving much unanswered, it is not the story itself that is important, the the themes at work here.
Hugh Jackman gives the best dramatic performance I have seen b a lead actor all year. Something of a control freak, he goes to pieces when the one absolute - death - takes his wife from him.
Rachel Weisz is the innocent, his opposite and equal, who is a bit of a free spirit. She prefers to leave things to fate. She conveys the fragile but fearless existence of Izzy, and the commanding vulnerability of the Queen of Spain.
Ellen Burstyn and Aronofsky favorite Mark Margolis in particular offer great support to the two stars, as do Cliff Curtis, Ethan Suplee, and Stephen McHattie, as the Grand Inquisitor. But it is Jackman who shines the brightest, and Weisz who seals the deal.
This, more than anything, is a film about ideas, and Aronofsky does a masterful job of showing these ideas unravel.
P.S. There is a small twist with regard to the Tree of Life, but this movie isn't about twists.