`THE FOUNTAIN' AN EYE-CATCHING MIND TRIP.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

You want trippy? Go to a Darren Aronofsky movie.

The writer-director's last one, ``Requiem for a Dream,'' took us relentlessly down the rabbit hole of drug-addict degradation, while simultaneously demonstrating that cinema could approximate the experience of acid trips both good and bad. I like to think that this uncompromising and assaultive film might single-handedly have prevented hundreds of aspiring junkies from ruining their lives.

As for Aronofsky's first feature, ``Pi,'' well, nobody has ever captured the mad mental swirl of mathematical paranoia better. Of course, no one else ever bothered to try.

Now we have ``The Fountain.'' It's the filmmaker's most ambitious and expensive movie to date. It's also his most puzzling and, at the same time, his most conventional, with its confusing Hollywood time-mangling and meta-spirituality. The movie has a lot on its plate: three different, somehow intertwined narratives set during the Spanish Conquest, the present and an outer-space future; visual opulence and a strobe-o-

scopic editing scheme that, like so much else about the picture, mean to rival Kubrick; and, of course, a love story that knows no bounds.

But what all this adds up to beyond a lot of very cool images in service to some big, fuzzy ideas remains a quandary, although you have the option of just digging the ride.

Hugh Jackman plays three guys named Tom (or are they all the same, immortal man?). Conquistador Tomas runs around the Mayan Yucatan in search of that legendary youth fountain, since that's the only thing that can save the queen he loves, Isabel, from the Inquisition.

(Wait a minute; wasn't the real Queen Isabella an enthusiastic persecutor of non-Catholics?).

Anyway, the monarch is played by Rachel Weisz, who also plays cancer victim Izzi in the modern section. Her husband Tommy is an obsessive medical researcher desperate to find her a cure. And he's coming close to it with a miraculously healing chemical he's isolated from a tree in Guatemala. That's former Mayan territory Guatemala.

See the connections?

And some 500 years from now, bald, meditative Tom is piloting some craft that looks like a big bubble to some faraway nebula that -- ready for it? -- the Mayans worshipped. His only companions are visions of Izzi and the Tree of Life, which we can safely bet began its own life as a Guatemalan acorn.

You'll likely have trouble following a lot of the details in these stories, strained connective elements or not. Aronofsky tries to help by overlapping narratives and repeating scenes at a generally increasing velocity, but that just has the effect of mashing up matters more. By the time we reach what I think was the climax -- it's like ``2001'' meets ``Aliens'' meets ``The Secret Life of Plants,'' so I'm assuming that's what it was -- poor Jackman has been put through seven or eight kinds of emotional wringers. And it's still unclear if all three of his roles are supposed to be the same guy. But at this point it's hard to care.

Intricate world

There is much great mechanistic beauty in the way Aronofsky builds his intricate, inbred mind world with previous collaborators Matthew Libatique (cinematography), Jay Rabinowitz (editing), James Chinlund (production design) and Clint Mansell with his throbbing, Philip Glass-like score. Blown-up microscopic photographs by Peter Parks are used for the more bizarre-looking space-scapes.

Some of Renee April's costume designs, especially for Weisz in her royal mode, are entertainment destinations in their own elaborate right.

Figuring it out

As for meaning, we're encouraged to draw our own interpretations. My personal favorite is that each tale represents the impulse for human faith in a fantasy when faced with heartbreaking loss. In the past and future sequences, it's pure superstition-driven beliefs, while in the present-day scenes it's a misplaced trust that science can solve all problems.

But it might just be a nice environmental message movie that -- while so busy tossing everything else into the mix -- forgot to add the penguins.

Whatever, Kubrick's ghost can rest soundly. Some will surely come out of ``The Fountain'' awestruck, but that's only because its parable is built around a simple-to-digest love story and not the truly challenging, mind-expanding test of the true Space Odyssey.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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THE FOUNTAIN - Two and one half stars

(R: violence, language)

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Ellen Burstyn.

Director: Darren Aronofsky.

Running time: 1 hr. 36 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Fountain of Youth/Meaning of Life/Eternal love questions are worked out across the past, present and future in Aronofsky's typically intense, over-edited style. The conclusion? That stuff's mind-blowing, man.

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Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman play lovers through the ages on a quest to find life everlasting in Darren Aronofsky's ``The Fountain.''