The Fountain (2006)

In Darren Aronofsky's profoundly meditative, highly-original and metaphysical, three-pronged (past, present, and future) sci-fi drama about immortality, death, and creation - with the tagline: "What if you could live forever?":

• the plot: three storylines told in the present-day, with the same set of characters (portrayed by Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman) but represented metaphorically across time and space: (1) modern-day: a scientist with his cancer stricken wife with a brain tumor, (2) Spain in the 1500s: a conquistador and his ill-fated Queen, and (3) futuristic 26th century: a cosmonaut and his lost love
• the early scene of the present-day couple: novelist Izzy Creo (Rachel Weisz, the director's real-life wife) and scientist-researcher husband Tommy Creo (Hugh Jackman) viewing the Golden Nebula of Xibalba on a snowy rooftop ("it's actually a Nebula wrapped around a dying star. That's what makes it look gold...The Mayans called it Xibalba...it was their underworld...a place that dead souls go to be reborn"); the Mayans believed the dying star was actually the origin of life
• the modern-day story: the hospital scene in which cancer-suffering and dying patient Izzy told her cancer-drug developer husband Tom (who somewhat ignored her in search for a cure in Guatemala) that she had accepted her fate and mortality - however, her dying request was that he finish the last and ninth chapter of her story writings titled "The Fountain" - in the earlier chapters it was about Queen Isabel's commission to a conquistador to search for eternal life in New Spain (in the Central American forest in Mayan lands); the last chapter represented the futuristic timeline; eventually, Izzy told him: "I'm not afraid anymore, Tommy"
• the Spanish story: Tomas Verde (also Hugh Jackman) as a Spanish explorer-conquistador sent out by his 16th century Queen Isabel (also Rachel Weisz) to search for the Tree of Life (or fountain of youth) in the Mayan jungle, after she had lost her kingdom and sought immortality - "Salvation lies in the jungles of New Spain. Will you deliver Spain from bondage?...Then you shall take this ring to remind you of your promise. You shall wear it when you find Eden. And when you return, I shall be your Eve. Together, we will live forever"

Cosmonaut-Traveler and Tree of Life

• the futuristic story: the space journey of balding 26th century immortal cosmonaut-traveler Tom Creo (also Jackman) to the Tree of Life - seated in a lotus position in a bubble in space, enroute to the Nebula - this portion of the story was actually Tommy's mind-set as he wrote the finishing chapter of Izzy's book, and gradually accepted her death - and transcended it
• the masterful way in which all of the parallel stories came together - the deliverance of Spain from bondage, Izzy's and Tommy's acceptance of the thought: "Together we will live forever" - and their learning to accept death and his completion of his late wife's novel