Grade: F

One of those follies that have so often resulted when precipitously (and preposterously) feted young directors are given over-free rein, Darren Aronofsky’s “The Fountain”–which despite its title isn’t exactly about the fabled Fountain of Youth but rather a Biblical tree (from Genesis 2) that offers eternal life–isn’t all that long (like, for example, Michael Cimino’s similar exhibition of self-indulgence “Heaven’s Gate”). But perhaps appropriately, given its subject, it seems to go on forever. It’s an artsy-fartsy disaster.

The script by Aronofsky, based on an idea–if that’s the right word–by him and Ari Handel, meshes together three plot lines in disparate time frames. The central one involves a medical researcher named Tommy (Hugh Jackman with hair at ordinary length) who’s working under boss Lillian Guzetti (Ellen Burstyn) on a drug to reduce the size of cancerous tumors. In treating one of their test monkeys, he accidentally stumbles on a formula that restores the old critter’s youth–a formula derived from the bark of a tree found in Guatemala. But that’s not what he’s searching for, of course–and his obsessive drive to succeed has a personal rationale: his beloved wife Izzi (Rachel Weisz) is dying of an inoperable brain tumor which Tommy is desperate to cure. This takes us to the second narrative thread. Izzi is a writer, almost finished with the manuscript of a manuscript titled “The Fountain,” in which a conquistador named Tomas (Jackman again, with beard and longer hair) is sent by the Spanish queen Isabel (Weisz again) to the New World to locate the tree of life and thereby save her from the terrors of the Inquisition. He’s directed to the object of his search by a Franciscan friar, Father Avila (Mark Margolis, badly miscast, looking like a New Jersey wiseguy in period costume), but it turns out to be guarded by a horde of natives in the service of a powerful priest, and in the ensuing battle Tomas is apparently killed but reborn through the agency of the tree. Thirdly, in a recurrent episode set in deep space far in the future, a bald Jackman plays Tom–the older Tommy–who’s traveling in a transparent globe, along with a dying tree (presumably the tree of life) to which he talks and from which he eats a bit of bark occasionally; he also has visions of the dying Izzi, and is bound for a nebula called Xibalba, which the Mayans identified (as author Izzi has helpfully informed us) with the underworld, where presumably the tree can be restored to health and Izzi to life.

All of this is presumably supposed to be some sort of profound reverie on life, death, and the love that spans them both, but Aronofsky hasn’t found a way to interconnect his three stories in a way that will achieve simple coherence, let alone any dramatic resonance. He tries to invest the misshapen screenplay with a sense of importance by indulging in empty camera trucks (he shows a special fondness for oppressive close-ups and pointless overhead shots, as well as for filming Weisz in gauzy halos of light) and reaching for a sort of Kubrickian stateliness which–unhappily–comes across as repetitive sluggishness instead. His baleful influence has a deadening effect on his leads. Jackman is all over the place, frantically chewing the scenery as Tommy, thrashing about in period garb as Tomas, and levitating about in lotus position as the futuristic Tom. The poor fellow really needs to slow down and choose his roles more carefully. As for Weisz, she really hasn’t much to do but wear a turban, smile knowingly and gaze like a wounded saint into the distance. Even so, she fares better than Burstyn, playing a part that’s the medical equivalent of the blustering captain in those old buddy-cop TV shows.

The picture isn’t even all that impressive visually. The effects in the space-travel sequence lack any real sense of wonderment, and Matthew Libatique’s cinematography throughout is fussy, with cramped compositions and dank settings. (A ludicrous scene in which the brutal chief inquisitor, played by Stephen McHattie, dangles some of his victims from long ropes in a cavernous cell is meant to be striking but comes across as absurd.) No relief is forthcoming from Clint Mansell’s lugubrious, over-insistent score.

Despite its title, “The Fountain” is an emotionally parched misfire, a would-be a film of ideas that runs dry of them very quickly.