= 2 stars

Starring Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz
Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Synopsis

The past, present, and future combine in a fantastical story of love, life, and death. A conquistador searches the Mayan jungle for the tree of life, a research doctor searches for a cure for his wife’s cancer, and a spaceman and his big tree speeding toward a faraway nebula.

The Good

• Some stunning visuals.
• Ambitious story line spanning several centuries.
• A core of emotional sincerity, the love between a man and a woman and the fragility of life.

The Bad

• Convoluted structure that makes the plot difficult to follow, therefore, what’s actually happening is frustratingly open to interpretation.
• Only four main characters, two of which are essentially alone in their respective time periods. Mr. Conquistador wanders in the jungle, and bald future man talks to a tree. A couple lives in the present day, but Thomas is a grumpy, tired bore while his aspiring author wife Izzy dies of a tumor. So we have four boring, overly serious characters I couldn’t get involved in.
• The budget is too low to fulfill the desired spectacles of past and future.

Conclusion

The Fountain once had a huge, epic budget and Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchette in the leads, but things got out of control and production was shut down. Director Aronofsky revived the project a few months later with a reduced budget, and took an “indie” approach. Unfortunately, it shows, as many scenes feel claustrophobic, filmed on small sets which cannot support the transcendent themes and epic locations. The conquistador segments suffer most.

Because the film is frustratingly opaque, I researched various interpretations. I found two that I personally found reasonably satisfying. First, I believe the conquistador segments are a fiction, contained the the book Izzy writes (titled The Fountain). The present-day segments are real. So the question becomes what to make of the future, bald-tree-loving-Thomas stuff.

One explanation is found at at Roger Ebert’s site where a fan offers that the future spaceman stuff is fiction as well – it’s the ending to Izzy’s story, written by Thomas, to fulfill her final wish. This interpretation means that the present day is surrounded by a fictional past and future, imagined by a husband and wife. Both generally fit with the characters’ personalities. Yes, the spaceman stuff makes little sense in a Conquistador story, but Tom is a scientist, not a writer. The result is a decent symmetry.

The second interpretation is that Tom discovers eternal life through continued monkey experiments, and so the spaceman is really him, 400 years in the future. Even after four centuries, he still hasn’t come to terms with his wife’s death. It’s asking the typical question when eternal life is considered – would it be worth it if all your loved ones are dead? And wouldn’t eternal life also mean an eternity of painful memories?

Then, if one believes in an afterlife, the spaceman is completely wasting his time. He cannot be reunited with Izzy until he learns to accept death and dies himself. So there is the thought that after the spaceman perishes in the nebula, he’s reunited with Izzy in the Mayan afterlife.

Others believe that upon death, he transcends space and travels back to the present day to relive his life. Whatever.

Ultimately, I only find the whole film analysis thing worthwhile if the characters are interesting enough to deserve it. I found it difficult to sympathize (and actually grew angry) with Thomas, because he wastes so much precious time trying to cheat death and not spending it with Izzy, enjoying their last few moments.

Yes, life is precious and we’re all mortal. But that message could have easily been a much simpler film, more specifically one without blossoming conquistadors and bald men in a bubble.

IMDB: The Fountain
Wikipedia: The Fountain
Rotten Tomatoes: The Fountain 50%

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Categories: 2 Star Movies, General, Movies :: 2 stars, Darren Aronofsky, Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz ::

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