DVD Review: The Fountain

The third film from one-time boy genius Darren Aronofsky (“Pi”, “Requiem for a Dream”) is a visually arresting, provocative piece of filmmaking along with being frustratingly oblique and muddled at the same time. Attempting for profoundness, the film more often than not falls into the pretentious category, but there are sporadic moments that have undeniable weight.

After his debut with the overrated ‘Pi’, an exercise in low-budget meanderings using now-antiquated pseudo-science and ‘Requiem for a Dream’, a terribly bleak, excessive meditation within the grungy world of drug-induced stupors, Aronofsky was supposedly the next big thing in Hollywood. He was getting offered seemingly every genre film that was coming around the corner in a certain time period including work on a pre-‘Batman Begins’ script with Frank Miller that he was going to direct along with a rumored run at Alan Moore’s ‘Watchmen’.

His big-budget associations were in a constant state of flux, however, so Aronofsky with a story by him and writing partner Ari Handel started preproduction on a 70-million version of ‘The Fountain’ fours years ago in Australia with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in the leads. Severe creative differences apparently led to Brad Pitt dropping out which acted as a siphon for the whole project and Warner Brothers pulled the plug on the project and auctioned off the sets that were being built. A nasty hit, Aronofsky picked up production again several years later in Canada – this time with a rewritten script that would have the budget cut in half with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz in the leads. The strain of all this stopping and starting and a truncated script is easily apparent upon viewing the film. Clocking in at a spry 90 minutes minus credits with a narrative cross through three timelines, the film suffers from editing fatigue and a weary director way too close to a very personal project.The narrative cuts back and forth between three very different time frames without much method to the madness. The film starts off in the 16th century as we meet a Spanish conquistador Tomas Creo (Hugh Jackman), who has been sent to the New World by his Queen Isabel (Rachel Weisz) to find the biblical Tree of Life from the Garden of Eden (which apparently thirsts on the fountain of youth) which would bestow immortality on her and her people. Once in Mayan country, he must battle his way through Mayan warriors to reach the peak of a Mayan temple that hides the tree of life. This thread we come to learn is the plot of a novel “The Fountain” being hand-written by Izzi (Weisz again) in the present. Suffering from a terminal brain tumor, immortality must lay heavy on her heart. But her husband Tommy (Jackman again) seems to bear the majority of the weight as he obsessively rushes to find a cure for cancer before her time runs out. A scientific surgeon who experiments on monkeys with a less-than-enthusiastic team, his obsession runs dangerously close to madness as he discounts amazing strides in aging to pursue only the cure for cancer. Ellen Burstyn (so great in ‘Requiem’) as Dr. Lillian Guzetti pops up as the head of the research facility to remind him of his madness but sympathizes with his plight. As Izzi shares with Tommy some research on her novel ‘The Fountain’, some amazing things start to happen with his experiments upon using a compound extracted from a Guatemalan tree. That Izzi has made her peace with death and only wants to spend her remaining time with her husband does not seem to comfort Tommy.

The last much-debated plot strand features Tom (one guess…) living inside a bubble containing only the tree of life where he sustains his life and the memories of his dearly departed. Supposedly the 26th century and steering the bubble by meditation, Tom charts an interstellar course towards the nebula Xibalba, a astrological body believed by the Mayans to be the location of the underworld, the place of the dead, where he hopes he can bring Izzi back from the dead. What the three Toms fail to understand, however, is the Mayan proverb that is spoken to him at a key time: “Death is the road to awe”. A film to be more admired for what it strives for than for what it actually ends up being, it’s a valiant effort on the themes of mortality and the extreme ties that can be lost through death. At its simplest terms, the tagline if you will, it’s a love story for the ages – ‘Somewhere in Time’ without the metaphysics. Along these terms, the film works - but Aronofsky self-indulgent desires to try and makes this more than a film, an insight into mortality for the masses, ultimately drags the film down. Esoteric without being terribly keen with his ideas seems to have found that the film doesn’t appeal to the masses or the arthouse crowd, alienating both. That this bewildering narrative might have benefited from the full script and budget will likely never be discovered, at least within the film format (A graphic novel based on his full script is being released and might be worth seeking out if you found yourself responding to some of these ideas). That the film doesn’t ultimately work is not for the lack of trying on Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz’s part. They both do a magnificent job with their three and two character roles in the film, respectively. Most of Jackman’s performance in the film centers on his contemporary scientist Tommy with broad strokes of painful emotion. A role that could have easily been taken over by histrionics and exaggerations, Jackman is able to convey a character that spends considerable time in a crying heap or fits of rage and madness with admirable restraint. His conquistador is little more than a action figure while the yogi/meditation antics of the cosmonaut may prove too much for most but the three roles add up to a fairly courageous feat of acting. Weisz, as Izzi, is not given a lot to do, but the role only really calls for her to be an endearing, life-affirming presence – a positively glowing woman that’s worth the time-spanning journey of trying to keep her alive. An act she’s easily capable of.

It’s also to note that the film is strikingly shot and designed using impressive real-time special effects where possible. Aronofsky wanted to keep CGI to a minimum and instead was able to attain certain effects by using micro-photography of chemical reactions on tiny Petri dishes. The f/x are appropriately otherworldly especially within the 26th century scenes with its golden layers of haze and outerspace atmosphere. The film is presented with a very nice anamorphic widescreen transfer and along with the standard trailer, the special features include a six-part documentary about the making of the film which traces origins of the project back to the failed first attempt up through the production and post-production of its current iteration. All told, the documentary runs a little over an hour and provides some intriguing footage of how the effects are achieved along with a lot of on-set footage. Mostly a technical unveiling, no real answers or insight from the cast and crew are provided about the story itself. It’s also disappointing if understandable that the documentary didn’t explore the plug-pulling of the first film more. The DVD case also provides an insert highlighting the admittedly nice Golden-Globe nominated score with music written by Clint Mansell and performed by the Kronos Quartet and Mogwai. Although I’ve heard countless times from various people that this film has a love/hate relationship with audiences, my reaction I suppose is the exception. I found it neither unwatchable tripe, a film so full of itself that it becomes insufferable nor did I respond to it as the film equivalent of sacred passages. I admired that Aronofsky attempted something a little meatier for audience consumption but can also concede that he failed at most of what he was trying to succeed with. No matter, there are some powerful scenes here, with strong acting and an accomplished visual sense so if you’re willing to look past the more hollow space sequences and some of the more turgid dialogue, you might find something to respond to.