Theatrical Review of The Fountain

---

Tools:
Send to a friend »

---

After a troubled screening at Venice where the film was the film was met with a scattering of boos, Darren Aronofsky arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival with a two-pronged strategy to promote his long-in-the-making project "The Fountain." Part One was defense. Aronofsky explained to the crowd that "The Fountain" was "very different" from his previous work, and implored the audience to forget all about "Pi" and "Requiem for a Dream." Part Two was offense. Aronofsky claimed to be delighted to see "such a young crowd" (the lighting must not have been very good from where he was standing) because that´s who "The Fountain" is really meant for.

Aronofsky´s intention is obvious: divide and conquer, or, more appropriately, divide and pander. "The Fountain" is meant only for the hippest viewers, the ones who "get it," and not for the old farts (i.e. critics) who don´t. It´s an effective strategy which both neutralizes any dissent, and further encourages supporters by lauding them for their manifest wisdom and good taste. It remains to be seen whether "The Fountain" will be received well upon its theatrical release later this year, but at least it received applause in Toronto. Of course, Toronto audiences applaud every film, no matter what, but it still had to boost the spirits of everyone involved with the movie.

"The Fountain" takes place over three time periods: 15th century Spain in the era of the conquistadors, present day, and an indeterminate time in the future (identified in trailers, but not in the film, as approximately 2500 A.D.) With such an epic scope, it´s surprising that the film runs at a mere 96 minutes, but Aronofsky achieves this by condensing the past and future episodes and focusing mostly on the present-day story.

[WARNING FOR READERS: The rest of the review contains significant spoilers.]

In the present-day action, Tom Verde (Hugh Jackman) is a doctor who experiments on animals in order to develop a treatment for brain tumors, which is pretty convenient considering that his wife Izzi (Rachel Weisz) suffers from the same ailment. When we first meet the doomed couple, Izzi has a bad relapse and her health begins to deteriorate rapidly. Izzi accepts her fate, Tom doesn´t. Unflinchingly chipper, she puts on a brave face for Tom, but this doesn´t stop the good doctor from working feverishly to advance his research, much to the consternation of his fellow doctors who believe, quite correctly, that his behavior is reckless. While Tom works day and night to save her, all that Izzi really wants is for Tom to read the new book she has written, and to finish writing the last chapter after she dies.

Izzi´s story (titled, coincidentally enough, "The Fountain") serves as a pretext for the film´s 15th century scenes. It is also the weakest of the three story lines. Involving a mysterious dagger, secret Mayan rituals, a quest for the fountain of youth, and a barely-sketched romance between a conquistador (Jackman) and Queen Isabella (Weisz), Izzi´s story plays like "The Da Vinci Code" as written for the Harlequin Romance market. It´s understandable that Tom doesn´t have the heart to tell his dying wife that she´s a lousy writer, but this dull plot strand never moves beyond the most superficial level, consisting mostly on a few rushed battle scenes and a whole bunch of mumbled Mayan mythology.

"The Fountain" can survive this misstep, however, because the future segment is its real powerhouse. In these scenes, a fully shaven Tom, looking an awful lot like David Carradine from "Kung Fu," travels through space in a bubble, with a mystical tree (presumably the ceiba tree or "Tree of Life" of the Mayan mythos) as his only companion. He travels the Milky Way on the road to Xibalba, a nebula which, as Izzi previously explained, represents the Mayan underworld. Here he hopes to bring back his dearly departed back to life. Along the way, he hears voices, eats some tree bark, and assumes the lotus position.

I suspect that viewers will either embrace or reject "The Fountain" mostly on the basis of these futuristic scenes, the most ambitious of the film. While some of the effects (many using photochemical, rather than CGI, processes) are pretty nifty, I found the images rather flat and uninspired. The obvious comparison here is to "2001: A Space Odyssey," but these scenes looked more like an commercial for the local Yoga And Spiritual Wellness Center than a modern rendition of "the ultimate trip." In addition, Aronofsky´s New Age metaphysics provide only the thinnest veneer of profundity. It´s the circle of life death is the road to awe the beginning is really the end the end is really the beginning and what if, uhh, C-A-T really spelled dog? Hey, wait, Izzi, her name´s a palindrome: see, it´s all cyclical and stuff. Deep man, like way down under.

Even forgiving the New Age glibness, the real problem lies at the very heart of the film, or rather its lack of heart. The tag line is "What if you could live forever?" but it could just as well be "What if you could love forever?" The story derives all of its dramatic power from the love between Tom and Izzi, a love that spans millennia and transcends thousands of light years. Unfortunately, we see minimal evidence of this eternal romance on screen. We know that Tom loves his wife because he says he does, but aside from a barrage of sweaty close-ups highlighting his anguish, he shows little sense of passion. Izzi is merely an ephemeral presence who exists only to die gracefully and thereby push her poor, beleaguered man beyond the limits of his endurance. The romance is even less convincing in the Spanish scenes, where Queen Isabella only has a distant, cordial relationship with her conquistador. Without a palpable, plausible romance to serve as the engine, the future scenes sputter for all their visual inventiveness, they feel hollow and perfunctory.

No doubt "The Fountain" will have its share of ardent defenders, most likely from that youth demographic the director has targeted. It certainly has its virtues, most notably its painful earnestness and the open-ended nature of the narrative. Aronofsky clearly believes in his story passionately, and has pulled out all the stops to present his vision on the screen. Perhaps the film, with its long and troubled production history, wasn´t exactly what he wanted, but at least there´s nothing coy or ironic about it. Aronofsky, much like Kubrick in "2001," also wisely avoids all but the slimmest of exposition, leaving "The Fountain" open to multiple interpretations. Though Izzi writes the story about 15th century Spain, she could just as easily be remembering a real past life. The Tom we see in the future may or may not be the same character as we see in the present perhaps the whole future storyline is a fantasy construction of Tom´s grief-stricken imagination. Fans will enjoy debating all the possible permutations, assuring the film a vibrant second life on Internet message boards for years to come.

With all of the parallels to "2001," defenders of "The Fountain" have already begun to trot out the early negative reviews garnered by Kubrick´s film (especially Pauline Kael´s hack job) as evidence that "The Fountain" is also a misunderstood masterpiece. The claim may be an accurate one, but the argument is wholly misguided. You can find negative reviews of any canonized film. It does not logically follow, however, that any film that initially receives poor reviews will one day be hailed as a masterpiece. I´m sure that some enterprising critic will eventually make an eloquent argument for Uwe Boll as the new Orson Welles, but I don´t expect "Bloodrayne" to knock "Citizen Kane" out of the AFI Top 100 any time soon.

"The Fountain" is not the disaster the Venice jeers might suggest, but it´s also far from the visionary masterpiece Aronofsky and company would like us to believe it is. At least it´s not guilty of being overlong, though the truncated nature of the past and future storylines predicts an extended "Director´s Cut" for the DVD release. The film has two of the essential qualities required to guarantee cult hit status: it is by a favored auteur, and it is a genre piece. It may become even more than that, no matter what the critics like me who just don´t "get it" have to say.

DVD Town Rating: 5 out of 10.

---

---