Review: The Fountain (2006)

THE FOUNTAIN
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: Mystic pizza. This is an enigmatic story
involving the Tree of Life with three story lines:
one in the 1500s, one in the near future, and one
in the far future. Darren Aronofsky is less
interested in coherence than in creating New Age-ish
cosmic images. This is the sort of film that plays
much better at midnight whether you stay up that
late or not. Rating: 0 (-4 to +4) or 4/10

The film 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY actually caught on when a certain
sort of customer discovered it was a great film to see stoned.
If there are any of you guys left around, boy do I have a film
for you! You will probably not see another film like this one
this year. You many not see one like this again this decade.
And you may never see the credit "Directed by Darren Aronofsky"
ever again.

The story conflates the biblical Tree of Life from the Garden of
Eden with the Fountain of Youth that Ponce de Leon searched for
in the New World and failed to find. In the 1500s Tomas Creo
(played by the ubiquitous Hugh Jackman) comes to explore the New
World. Through mystical means he believes he has a map of the
way to the Tree of Life which God has hidden in the Mayan
jungles. The radiantly beautiful but otherwise uninteresting
Queen Isabel (Rachel Weisz) sends him on this mission.

Interwoven with this plot line we have the story of Tom (Hugh
Jackman), a near-future medical researcher who is trying to cure
disease, but instead finds his new botanical substance may also
reverse aging and restore youth. He has a special interest in
saving lives and giving immortality because his beautiful wife
Izzi (Rachel Weisz) is dying of a brain tumor and Tom will wants
to save her life. Her hobby is writing--longhand--a story of
Tomas Creo who may be real or may be her fictional imagining. We
do not know for sure which so we do not know if we are supposed
to accept the 1500s story as being fact in this world or her
fiction. She is creative, but still is an untouchable image,
emotionally as flat as Queen Isabel.

A third plot thread takes place in the far future with Tommy
(Hugh Jackman) floating in Xibalba, a golden glowing nebula out
in space. He is there to worship his love embodied as a tree.
The tree has absorbed his love more or less like something out of
"The Quatermass Experiment". The tree cannot talk to him, being
a tree, but it does show its love by having tendril-like fibers
in its bark respond to the proximity of his Tommy's hand.

Bits and pieces of what is going on do sneak past all the
beautiful, but mostly incomprehensible imagery to tantalize the
viewer with hints of what the story is actually about. These
frequently take the form of images repeated from one age to the
next. For example, there is a repeating image of three stars (or
holes or objects) forming an equilateral triangle to point to the
fourth object at the center. Or we see a car or a horse coming
at the camera, but the camera is upside-down. The eye is
momentarily confused, but as the car/horse passes under camera,
our view follows it turning right side up. One wonders whose
point of view this is supposed to be.

Eventually the coherence of the story is forgotten and replaced
by more incomprehensible images. Certainly we see mandalas as a
background for Tom floating and levitating in lotus position.
The images are nicely reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s
psychedelic style. The story is very nicely illustrated, but
opaquely told.

The film appears to be short in a most thrifty manner. All
scenes seem to have been filmed on a soundstage, and a small one
at that, making the film seem a little claustrophobic, ironic for
it cosmic themes. The film does have major actors like the
ubiquitous Jackman and like Weisz. Smaller roles go to Aronofsky
veterans Ellen Burstyn and Mark Margolis.

It is hard to completely pan a film that is so visually, if
claustrophobically, stunning. But it is harder to recommend a
film that is so cryptic as to be incomprehensible. This is a
film for the very narrow audience who can be just be immersed in
its mysterious cosmic imagery. Drink deep of this fountain or
not at all. I rate it a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale or 4/10.


Mark R. Leeper
mleeper.RemoveThis@optonline.net
Copyright 2006 Mark R. Leeper