Unfocused but Ambitious

Rating: 8/10 (28 May 2007)

It's boring for the first 30 minutes, doesn't set itself up properly, and it's hard to care about the characters on any real level, but I highly recommend this movie. An odd way to preface it indeed, but a movie this ambitious deserves respect. In the end I did enjoy this film, but its flaws are very evident. A large part of the reason I wanted to see this film was because of Aronofsky. I loved his first two films, and see this as a worthy if less focused entry into his body of work.
By now it's becoming clear that Aronofsky is interested in people and their obsessions. In 'Pi' we had a man fixated by math, 'Requiem' was about people obsessed with finding hope via drugs, and here we have the Jackman character who is obsessed with one thing across three different incarnations of himself. The themes of love and the life cycle are muddied by contradictory aspects of the central characters personality. On the one hand Tommy is an obsessed scientist, on the other he is a man in love. Aronofsky seems to want us to believe that he searches for everlasting life so that he may have everlasting love (sorry). However, do we really believe that his obsessions are driven by love? No. Tommy would be fixated on his ideas regardless of his love. These sort of contradictions exist throughout the film and weigh it down, ultimately preventing it from being a great film. All the characters outside of the two main ones are 2-D and perfunctory at best. Burstyn seems to be the only other real character here and her only role is to agree with Tommy that Izzie is indeed wonderful.
If you like the ambition of films like 'Wings of Desire' or 'Donnie Darko' see this movie, but know that the final product here is less successful than those two films. But it's a worthwhile disappointment.