It's a film that captures that full epic about three main stories from the past, present and future. The film explores the modern-day scientist and his cancer-stricken wife, the conqueror and the queen, and the future space traveler, where each of them experiences a perfect and completely different experience.
Visual alchemist Darren Aronofsky's most personal work is a double helix of love and loss - death entwined with life as existence's only reliable truths. It offers a transfixing merger of biological imperatives and musings on creativity and tragedy.
Mr. Aronofsky's outlook on life remains too constantly pessimistic for my taste, and too completely joyless as well.
AV Club
November 27, 2006
Darren Aronofsky clearly didn't set out to make a usual movie...[The Fountain's] a story of overreaching that itself overreaches, but that might have been impossible to avoid.
Empire Magazine Australasia
November 16, 2012
The enormous, and sometimes inspired, visual arc of Aronofsky's reach sadly exceeds his narrative's basic grasp.
Chicago Sun-Times
September 14, 2007
I will concede the film is not a great success. Too many screens of blinding lights. Too many transitions for their own sake. Abrupt changes of tone.
