I’ve been looking forward to Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain ever since I saw the trailers late last year and spotted the gorgeous art book at A Different Bookstore (there’s also a graphic novel illustrated by Kent Williams). Aronofsky has been quietly making small art films since the late 90’s and his two previous movies (Pi, and Requiem for a Dream) both received great reviews and — as if often the case with these types of movies — floundered at the box office.
The Fountain is Aronofsky’s third feature, stars Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz and talks about big, sweaty topics like life, death, love and immortality. Mostly it depicts Jackman’s quest to save Weisz, in an adventure that spans two millenia. (Check out the trailer here).
I was looking at The Fountain as being similar to Tim Burton’s Big Fish, or Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth — a visually lavish masterpiece from a visionary filmmaker. For the most part, it does fulfill those expectations, although I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so … insubstantial. The Fountain is wildly ambitious and reaches out in at least three different directions without really capturing anything, and I left the theater wondering what it was that it was really trying to say. (Was it to accept death as inevitable? That love conquers all? That life and death are cyclical? That not all dreams are achievable without compromise? All of the above?)
Still, this is easily the most visually arresting film I’ve seen over the past 12 months (although I should probably qualify that by saying I haven’t seen Pan’s Labyrinth), and you should check it out if only to see how far Aronofsky has taken the art-form with this one feature.