7. The Fountain
Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain is a dizzyingly cathartic, ethereal exercise in the realms of narrative. Being Aronofsky's most maligned film, its reception seemed to stem from a certain obtuse miscommunication in what the film was, I feel deliberately on his part. No one could really get a grasp of what the film was about or understand what it was proposing and like Falcone notes in Batman Begins, "you always fear what you don't understand". Was it a mopey character drama? A historical epic? A 2001-esque sci-fi quandary? It was all of these and none of them. It is however a lush visual spectacle that literally glows thanks to Matthew Libatique's photography and space vistas that would make Douglas Trumbull blush. As well as boasting career topping performances from Hugh Jackman and the consistently brilliant Rachel Weisz, the icing on the cake is the haunting, epochal score by Clint Mansell. It's a film that trusts its audience to give themselves over to the heady flights of fancy that Aronofsky takes you on. But take his hand and you'll be rewarded massively with a deeply affecting fable about the fragility of life and the befuddling metaphysics that comes with confronting death.