Extraordinarlily ambitious, but a failure all the same.

Rating: 6/10 (8 February 2008)

This is an extraordinary film in so many ways which doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good one. Indeed, it is a failure but an ambitious, over-reaching one with bits here and there that really are amazing. It has had a troubled history. At one point the film was 'scrapped' and started over, it's leading actor recast. This is just one of the many unfortunate elements of the finished product since Hugh Jackman's performance is largely inadequate.
The film follows three separate stories linked by, what we must assume are, the same pair of lovers played by the same performers, one set at the time of the conquistadors, the other in the present and the third in the distant future. It all has to do with the Tree of Life, (you know, the one from the Garden of Eden), love through eternity, conquering death and all that. The ideas themselves are fine but they don't gel; the film's troubled history is all too obvious. This feels like a film that has been badly chopped about, (maybe it hasn't; maybe this was all Aronofsky wanted), and the pretty terrible acting of all concerned doesn't help.
Yet there is considerable imagination here and visually certain scenes take the breath away. The medieval sequences are sumptuous and the scenes set in 'deep space' are often magnificent. It's the 'middle' story that is mundane and yet these scenes are the anchor for everything else that happens. The stories are inter-linked so we keep moving back and forth in time until finally we tire of the dull central yarn. I didn't like Aronofsky's hyper-kinetic drugs movie "Requiem for a Dream". At least, this time round he showed, in tantalizing glimpses, just what a fine film-maker he can be ... and then he blew it.