The Fountain (2006)

August 22, 2009

DVD, Seattle, WA

**** / ****

File:Fountain poster 1.jpg

By Scott Muoio

I go to the movies for several reasons: to think, to feel, to be visually awed, to be transported to a new or familiar world, and to be entertained. The best movies I see are those that grab me in one or more of these ways, films that stick with me for months and years afterward. Most of the time I am disappointed. Occassionally I am deeply moved.

The extremely ambitious, heavily panned, yet surprisingly effective The Fountain is one such movie that moved me. With the emotion of a great love story, the ambition and intellectual daring of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the uncanny ability to balance the strange with the familiar The Fountain is a remarkably touching and fascinating bit of filmmaking.

Three stories are layered within one another as a desperate scientist named Tommy (Hugh Jackman) struggles to find a cure for a malignant tumor that threatens to end his wife, Izzy’s (Rachel Weisz) life. The first story happens in the present with Tommy racing against the clock to find the cure while he regretfully begins to realize his efforts are causing him to miss the last months of their time together. The second story is that of The Fountain, a fictional tale of a conquistador searching the Mayan dynasty for The Fountain of Youth. That particular story is being written in the present by Izzy, with all but the final chapter completed. The third story is that of an otherworldly nebula that Mayans believe is the place where life began. On that nebula are the mystical Tree of Life, as described in The Bible, as well as a futuristic Tommy and the ghost of his beloved wife. Both Tommy and Izzy appear as the main characters in all three of these tales, blurring the lines between the mental and material worlds while at once creating an epic poem of love, loss, life, and immortality that is as heartbreaking as it is wonderfully ponderous.

No doubt many critics and audiences were turned off by The Fountain because it is so “out there,” treading water at a furious pace while refusing to relent any of its earnestness. This type of adherence to earnestness often results in schlock, but with Hugh Jackman courageously bringing a range of truthful emotion to his trio of roles he almost single-handedly saves the earnest melodrama from tumbling into the absurd. When coupled with a pulsating original score by Clint Mansell and writer/director Darren Aronofsky’s incredible ability to repeat key images and bits of scenes, each time offering new glimpses into their significance and meaning, the impact of the entire film intensifies to the point where its faults magically melt away. The result is a film that touched in a way few ever have.

If you are someone who enjoys your movies straightforward, cut-and-dry, or with the usual narrative arc and typical character development than The Fountain is not for you. However, if you are willing to accept The Fountain as an epic poem that believes the answers to our highest questions can only be understood as bursts of image, feeling, and thought than The Fountain just might move you as much as it did me. It isn’t perfect but it is beautiful.

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Producer: Arnon Milchan, Eric Watson, Iain Smith

Writer: (Story) Darren Aronofsky, Ari Handel, (Screenplay) Darren Aronofsky

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Ellen Burstyn

Original Music: Clint Mansell

Cinematographer: Matthew Libatique