>>REVIEW
THE FOUNTAIN
STARRING: Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz
DIRECTED BY: Darren Aronofsky
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If a man stopped you on the street, kicked you to the curb and pressed his boot into your chest while staring into your eyes and intoning "Live in the now, man," you’d probably take exception. But if there is anything magical about film, it is that a director as talented as Darren Aronofsky can take this same message, repeat it for 96 minutes, and have you leaving the theatre saying, "Gosh, but that was pretty."
Originally cast with double the budget and Brad Pitt as the film’s time/narrative-hopping protagonist, Aronofsky’s retooled opus casts Hugh Jackman as a man (or men) obsessed with conquering death in the name of love. As a fictitious conquistador, a neuroscientist and a bubble-ship-flying space monk, Tomas/Tommy/Tom each search in their own way for immortality – theirs and Queen Isabel/Izzi’s (Rachel Weisz).
At its worst, The Fountain shows that Aronofsky’s writing is still not on par with his directing, with lines like Tommy’s deadpan explanation of two chemical chains: "Imagine them folding into each other, like lovers." "Oh, lovers," you can practically hear the lab techs exclaiming, slapping their foreheads. "This changes everything. To the science room!"
With a resumé that includes a modern day Reefer Madness (Requiem for a Dream) and a film that actually sees its protagonist take a power drill to his skull (Pi), no one has ever accused Aronofsky of subtlety, and he certainly plays to character. Then again, when your picture’s this pretty, why worry about keeping its tones muted?
Despite its reduced budget and resulting cuts to its CG elements, The Fountain paints its world in sombre shadows and deep golds, from the dimly lit operating room of John’s experiments to the brilliance of the stars as his future self moves toward a golden nebula. Aronofsky is even able to incorporate a few choice images of startling brutality through his conquistador’s, well, conquest – engaging a mob of Mayan warriors in close quarters, a flaming sword swinging a mortal stroke.
The Fountain’s message is an elementary one, the familiar "life is too important today to worry about tomorrow" of go-go Wall Street lawyers and arrogant surgeons who find love in an unlikely plot twist. But even with Aronofsky’s stubborn insistence on repeating scenes of this ham-fisted moralizing verbatim, the images he forces on us again and again are simply too beautiful to be denied.
Paper-thin characters and thick purple prose? Absolutely. But it was a pretty picture. |
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