untitled
THE
FOUNTAIN
Written & Directed by: Darren
Aronofsky
Internet
Movie
Database Entry for full details
GRADE: A
2006.
The Fountain
opens with Hugh Jackman dressed as a conquistador, doing battle with a
brood of tribal Mayan warriors at the base of a temple's tall, stone
staircase. It seems straight out of Mel Gibson, though with the visual
sophistication of Terrence Malick, and I began to wonder why this film
wasn't more popular with American audiences upon its initial release.
After Jackman receives a dagger wound from a high Mayan priest, a
significant moment that'll be revisited several times throughout the
film, Aronofsky jumpcuts to Jackman, now draped in robes and with
shaved head, in the lotus position, levitating in deep space. He
awakens from his meditation and floats into an orb, where he begins
talking to a tree—the only significant object in this homey
sphere—telling it not to worry and that everything'll be all
right. Oh, right, that's why this movie wasn't popular.
But that's unfortunate, because The Fountain is a great film,
a bold and successful amalgam of Biblical imagery, Mayan mythology,
Eastern spirituality and modern science. (I suppose in the last six
years since Aronofsky's made a movie he's been reading books—and
not just pulp fiction courtesy of Hubert Selby, Jr.!) The Fountain
has three intersecting stories, featuring the same principal actors,
that parallel and inform one another; each is set in a different place
and time frame—the past, present, and future,
presumably—and each deals, in its own way, with the task of
facing our own, and our loved ones', mortality. In the present, Jackman
is a surgeon and researcher, dealing with his wife's accelerating
cancer by denying its finality and trying to find a cure. (You
certainly can't fault him for lack of ambition.) His wife, however,
played by Rachel Weisz, is dealing with it by trying to come to terms
with the inevitability of her impending death, primarily through the
study of Mayan legends and folklore. She's also writing a romance,
coincidentally entitled The Fountain, about a conquistador searching for the Tree of Life, an arboric take on the Fountain of Youth courtesy of Genesis 3:24.
The conquistador storyline plays as a clever, if somewhat simplistic,
allegory for Weisz's declining health. (Had Aronofsky tried to make The Fountain
any more complicated, it probably wouldn't work.) In it, the
Inquisition is laying waste to Spain, with the Grand
Inquisitor—introduced in a gruesome, still Gibsonesque scene of
self-flagellation—in the oncogenic role previously played by
Weisz's cancer, "an enemy thriving within [Spain's] borders, feasting
on her strengths," as Jackman the conquistador explains it. But mixed
into these two storylines—the search for a cure and the search
for the Tree—is a bit set in the future, or so I've read; nothing
in the film indicates the aforedescribed bubble scenes are set in a
different time. (Maybe it's in the Press Kit? Or it's just a marketing
ploy?) At that point, I think you have to abandon concepts of time and
space, and understand that the bubble is a different plane, man, a
manifestation of Jackman's subconscious or spiritual life...or
something like that, perhaps; it's as though the starchild from 2001 is all grown up and taking an interest in gardening—Aronofsky certainly can't be faulted for lack of ambition, either.
Though I suppose he never could be; both of his previous films, Pi and Requiem for a Dream, are high-reaching, just a bit overwrought and jejune in their sensibilities. (Though I am partial to Pi.) The Fountain,
however, indicates some substantial growth for Mr. Aronofsky, and marks
what will hopefully be a turning point in his career; it's a work of
real emotional, spiritual and cinematic maturity, and though his story
and imagery are spectacular, they're captured on celluloid with
thoughtful restraint. He recognizes that he needn't add flash, in order
to make his points, to the already present power of his high concept,
and so the camera is reserved; the editing's tempered; the lighting,
while complex and gorgeous, is rarely showy; and scenes fade out
gracefully, as though they too, like Weisz, are softly dying.
Meanwhile, Jackman and Weisz bring enough sensitivity and passion to
their roles to carry the film, keeping it grounded in genuine human
emotionality and saving it from possibly falling off into either
sentimentality or stiff intellectual exercise.
By expanding his story, which is essentially just a man dealing with
his wife's fatal illness, into a triptych mescaline trip through space
and time, Aronofsky uncovers more hard human truths than he'd have been
able to through any one story alone; by having each section comment on
the other, and enhancing the meaning therein, he comes to a reasoned
conclusion on the nature of death and loss, and their relationship to
love. It's surprisingly, and impressively, sophisticated for a man of
his still young age.
Jackman's fatal flaw is that he sees death as a disease, something that
can be cured like any other; if over two thousand years of tragedy have
taught us anything, it's that that sort of hubris can only be
destructive. Meanwhile, Weisz is honestly confronting the reality of
her death, constantly telling her husband she is no longer afraid.
Death for her, by way of old Mayan texts, is an act of creation. "Our
bodies are prisons for our souls," the Inquisitor declares, adding that
"death frees every soul." I don't know if I'd trust the Grand
Inquisitor, but his brimstone speech still falls in line with the
film's central theme. "Death is the road to awe," a Mayan priest tells
the conquistador, and over the course of a brisk and stirring ninety
minutes the audience comes to face that death cannot be conquered or
destroyed; the best we can do is to consume it, rather than allow it to
consume us.
--
Henry Stewart
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The Fountain
opens with Hugh Jackman dressed as a conquistador, doing battle with a
brood of tribal Mayan warriors at the base of a temple's tall, stone
staircase. It seems straight out of Mel Gibson, though with the visual
sophistication of Terrence Malick, and I began to wonder why this film
wasn't more popular with American audiences upon its initial release.
After Jackman receives a dagger wound from a high Mayan priest, a
significant moment that'll be revisited several times throughout the
film, Aronofsky jumpcuts to Jackman, now draped in robes and with
shaved head, in the lotus position, levitating in deep space. He
awakens from his meditation and floats into an orb, where he begins
talking to a tree—the only significant object in this homey
sphere—telling it not to worry and that everything'll be all
right. Oh, right, that's why this movie wasn't popular.
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