Has the potential to move heaven and earth, fails again and again

Rating: 4/10 (23 November 2006)

I'm a huge Darren Aronofsky fan. Pi and Requiem for A Dream were works of art. As is this film. However, the first two had a plot that made the movie worth watching, even if they had not been works of art.
This one doesn't. It's magnificently shot, directed, acted, everything - except when it comes to the plot. It has *potential* and it has it in spades. It has no end of *potential*.
But when you get down to it, at the end of the movie, what are you left with? A beautifully shot movie, with a haunting look and sound, some feelings about some of the most weighty themes in existence and... That's it.
Just feelings. Not even fully-formed ones. The movie can't even get that far. It raises great questions, but I can raise the same ones by holding a blade of grass before my eyes and contemplating lots of fascinating philosophical ideas by very old dead people.
However, no one pays me for such things, nor would I pay Darren Aronofsky for the same. It's like someone with all the talent in the world creating a movie, but at the last second noticing that he had only written 1/3rd of the script and stretched what he had to fit what he had shot.
It might be worth watching when they release the director's cut version, where they add the plot back in.