Darren
Aronofsky’s The Fountain
You really have to admire the use imagery in The
Fountain. This director, Darren Aronofsky, finds some very inventive ways to show what has been
otherwise boring shit in other movies.
This movie’s plot is a guy trying to figure out how to
finish an adventure novel left incomplete by his dead wife. But instead of showing him sitting around on
the sofa with no pants and a bag of Cheet-ohs they
make his thought process something beautiful to watch. His state of focussed thought is shown on a
plain of enlightenment that is a tree on a small island floating through the
cosmos. When he’s tossing ideas around
he swims through the air and does slow-motion flips, when’s he’s thinking about
what his wife would do her essence shows up in his mind dressed like Little Red
Riding Hood (only white) to advise him, and when he hits epiphany his entire
body goes supernova and rockets into the sky.
If you ask me this beats brow furrowing, head scratching, and lip biting
any day of the week.
Not that I would’ve minded seeing a bit of Jackman on the sofa with the Cheet-ohs,
I really liked their bedroom in this film and was interested in how this chique couple would have decorated their living room. The bedroom had some nice panelling action
and a comfy-looking high-sitting mattress.
The bedroom isn’t as pretty to look at as the tree floating in outer
space, but it does its best.
I also like the way he’s totally bald when he’s on the
plain of enlightenment. How many times
are trying to focus and you just end up scratch your head or trying to push you
hair out of your eyes? This is inventive
shit. If this how Darren Aronofsky depicts thinking about a novel I’m willing to bet
that he could make an awesome movie about a cat trying to figure out a way to
climb on top of the television.
Whenever the novel is being written you actually see
the story being acted out. For the most
part they make movies about somebody trying to accomplish something
physical. They make movies like Flashdance or Rocky because it’s more screen
friendly to show somebody dancing or running and punching as opposed to a
pen. There’s a reason people pay to go into
strip clubs but pen shops have got to let you in for free. Pens aren’t exciting, even when in
motion. But a badassed
conquistador bustin’ Mayan heads is, and this Aronofsky fellow knows that! It’s also a testament to what an awesome wife
this guy lost that she would write a story with all sorts of Apocalypto action in it and not just some lame Maeve Binchy piece of shit. So this makes his grief even more profound.
The man is played by Hugh Jackman,
and I’ve always had a lot of affection for this guy and it’s good to see him
shine in a movie that isn’t about something goofy like a guy with switchblades
in his knuckles, or a poor magician who is neither poor nor a magician but
actually rich guy with a cloning machine, or that other hacker movie that had
John Travolta (enough said). I think
this Jackman has a good screen presence and I would
like to see him make more movies that are to my liking and that don’t have
teleporting German lizards. He doesn’t
do anything crazy and dramatic, he leadfoots his car
a bit, but his character is totally believable and human this time.
The wife is played by Rachel Weisz. I think it should be noted that The
Fountain is the only film in which Rachel Weisz’s
penmanship is as pretty as her eyes. I
know in Enemy At the Gates they said she was
Russian-German bilingual but you never saw her write anything in either
language. And I think every character in
The Mummy and Constantine was supposed to be illiterate, but I
could be wrong. This novel she’s writing
before she dies is handwritten with perfectly formed letters and even spacing
between words and lines, achieving the justified text alignment without aid of
computerized word processor.
I know if I were dying of cancer and trying to write a
novel I’d scribble some doodles on napkins, call it a day, then head back to my
morphine; but this film is dealing with the idea of eternity so it makes sense
that Rachel would write like she had all the time in the world. The novel’s production quality brings
together the film’s themes of eternity and prettiness quite well.
This film also features Sean Patrick Thomas in a
supporting role. I’m afraid that after
doing Save The Last Dance, Cruel Intentions, Cruel Intentions
2, and now this, he might be getting typecast in heavy “idea” movies and
should maybe swap scripts with Jackman and do a movie
about a hero with hooks in his elbows or something. He holds his own in a staring contest against
Jackman, and that takes something. This guy’s got presence and delivers the
goods.
The cast also features Ellen Burstyn and a monkey who
are both good, too.
All the supporting characters work at the hospital
where Jackman is trying cure
cancer. In a sense,
the pursuit of eternal life. They
are using bark from different trees around the world because apparently there’s
some stuff about displaced trees of eternal life right there in the Bible. Nobody had ever looked into finding these
trees, so I guess that’s a sign that nobody was really taking this whole
religion thing as seriously as I would’ve thought. I mean, they leave that Bible thing in hotel
rooms, but I guess nobody every thought of really reading it. I guess everybody’s just been bluffing and
making up their own values all these centuries and maybe just skimming the
parts with Jesus.
In the end, Jackman figures
out the ending that Weisz would have wanted to her
novel and it teaches him the lesson of the film: that it is only possible to
achieve eternity by giving up the pursuit of it. In the examples of this film, curing cancer
is a noble pursuit, but life is made special by little moments like going for a
walk in the snow and it doesn’t matter how many Mayan warriors’ heads you bust
open if you don’t have love. I realize
that they’ve made a lot of movies about this, but I think The Fountain
is better than Top Gun in many respects and well worth making.
I would also like to go on record saying that this was
one of the worst marketed films of all time.
The trailers made it look like some far out sci-fi movie, when it was
about a bloke trying to write a book. The
Fountain actually lasted in the cinemas shorter than its running time
because the trailers scared people off.
It’s not like 2001: Space Odyssey, like the ads suggest.
I’m kinda surprised that the
studio tried to sell this as a confusing sci-fi film when they would’ve had an
easy sell with the love story angle.
Sure some people might have gone to see it and been put off by the plain
of enlightenment’s imagery, but they still would’ve gone. This Aronofsky
guy’s previous movie was about crack addiction, panic attacks, a lady who’s
afraid of her television and degrading sexual spectacles, yet somehow it was
easier to sell to the mainstream audience than a flick about a doctor writing a
novel. Strange. Maybe because they got that chick from Labyrinth
more people wanted to see it. I wouldn’t
have minded if they’d thrown Hoggle in The
Fountain if it would’ve sold a few more tickets and helped promote this
wonderful film. If you haven’t seen it
yet it’s the perfect film to watch with no pants and a bag of Cheet-ohs.
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