Untwisting the knife ... Hugh Jackman in Darren Aronofksy's The Fountain, due for release in the US this weekend
In Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky's dizzying tale of drug addiction, Ellen Burstyn's character is locked into a hideous cycle of constant anticipation; waiting for a call that may never come from the makers of her favourite TV show, a deranged self-help infomercial known as Tappy Tibbons' Month of Fury.
Since 2000, when the Brooklyn-born wünderkind's second film was released to widespread acclaim, acolytes of Aronofsky's particular brand of abstract yet kinetic film-making can be forgiven for feeling as if they too have been trapped in a tortuous pattern of increasingly frenzied expectation.
The Fountain, Aronofsky's self-styled "post-Matrix, metaphysical sci-fi movie" finally hits US cinemas this weekend. A complex three-tiered work (set variously in Spanish-conquered South America, a modern day city and onboard a starship 500 years into the future), it was supposed to come out three years ago.
It was also supposed to mark Aronofsky's coming of age. What would the director whose 1998 debut Pi managed to explore enormous mathematical and theological concepts with a budget of just $60,000 do with a massive stack of greenbacks and an almost recklessly ambitious script purporting to examine issues of life, death, immortality and undying love across an entire millennium?
The Fountain was supposed to have a budget of $70m. It was supposed to star Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt. Aronofsky was supposed to be the coming man, the new Kubrick, even. How things change.
It's not so much that the final version of the film stars Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman instead of Pitt and Blanchett. Nor even that it got a reduced budget of $40m. It's the lukewarm reviews - booed at the Venice film festival, the Hollywood reporter called it a "flatulent dissertation on the benefits of dying" - and the tepid support the movie has received from its studio, Warner, who have effectively sat on it for 18 months, which will have been giving Aronofsky sleepless nights.
But there is hope yet. Check the imdb movie boards and it seems that anticipation is still high amongst the sort of cinemagoers representative of Aronofsky's fanbase. And Jackman, whose interest rejuvenated the film, has box office pull with exactly the right type of audience to make it a hit. To cover its substantial budget The Fountain must attract the crowd that went to see the Matrix and Lord of the Rings as well as those which saw Donnie Darko and Being John Malkovich.
Perhaps that long wait has only served to fuel its enigma. And if it does reasonably well at the box office, could the rumoured longer, uncut version emerge on DVD, or even at the cinema, as happened with Darko?
Could this yet be one of those films that split critics and fans? Could one man's obtuse and over-intellectualised mess be another man's cult tour-de-force? US audiences, at least, are about to find out.
