I’ve now seen two Darren Aronofsky films. On some level, it’s hard to believe that The Fountain and The Wrestler came from the same director. The difference in scale, the grand overlying themes, seem to put these movies worlds apart. And yet, they are both intimate portraits of a man.

The grandiosity of The Fountain is why it didn’t work for me. While I understood the conceit, it never seemed to coalesce into anything cohesive. The Wrestler, on the other hand, was so simple in its goals, in plot and storyline, that it seems to rise above its subject matter.