Revisiting THE FOUNTAIN

[jo]

Someone from IMDB who professes that he does not care for Aronofsky's style of filmmaking has put together a montage of his many movies. It is called THE ROAD TO AWE : THE ART OF DARREN ARONOFSKY.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjhe4Rxksh4

It includes scenes from Pi, Requiem, Black Swan, The Wrestler, Noah, and of course The Fountain. There are many scenes of the Hugh Jackman trifecta characters, close-ups or action scenes.

Jo

[jo]

www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/thursday-july-30-20150722-3zoz7.html

The Fountain (2006) netflix.com.au

Darren Aronofsky was something of a wunderkind of the American cinema well into his 30s; that meant comparatively few people have seen his previous movies, 1998’s math and prophecy mystery Pi and 2000’s unyielding study of addiction, Requiem for a Dream, before he made The Fountain, a treatise on whether love is stronger than death with the celebrity wattage of Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz (Aronofsky’s then wife). In 15th century Central America a Spanish conquistador, Tomas (Jackman), searches for the mythical Tree of Life on the orders of Queen Isabella (Weisz), who believes it holds the secret to immortality. They are, you learn, characters in a book being written by Izzi (Weisz), a contemporary author dying from a cancerous brain tumour. Her husband, Tom (Jackman), is a research scientist desperately searching for a cure. In the 25th century a man who may also be Tom (less his hair) is travelling through outer space, transporting a dying tree towards a star in a distant nebula about to explode. Haunted by memories of loss, he may be trying to resurrect Izzi, or deal with his own, long-suspended, mortality. The Fountain is concerned only with philosophical matters. If you’re more interested in how a clear bubble is transporting a tree through outer space, then this is not the filmmaker for you. But the film is so tightly wound that it barely breathes. It’s so caught up in the lives of the paired protagonists that the supporting cast is almost superfluous. It’s shot with a darkened palette and a claustrophobic feel, to match the disease engulfing Izzi, yet it remains the work of a young man, one fascinated by the weight of the metaphysical.

Craig Mathieson

[jo]

darren aronofsky ‏@darrenaronofsky · 3h3 hours ago
. #vintagetuesday on the set of #thefountain with @mattylibatique and @realhughjackman

[jo]

Written from the heart --

REVIEW: THE FOUNTAIN
07.13.06
By Devin Faraci

There's a moment in the "space bubble" segment of The Fountain where I realized the tattoos on Hugh Jackman's arms are counting off years, like the rings inside the tree sitting behind him. It's one of those moments that sent shivers down my spine because of the way it combines concept, theme and imagery into one perfect visual moment. There are a lot of scenes like that in The Fountain, scenes filled with subtle revelations and understandings. I walked out of the film dumbstruck with awe, having just seen something brilliant.

Brilliant is really the only word I can use to describe the film. It took Darren Aronofsky years to get his movie made, but every day was worth it. The finished work is wonderful, is moving, is stunning. I may have walked out of the movie dumbstruck but I spent the next few days wishing I could talk to someone about it. The movie stayed in my mind; not just images (and there are so many gorgeous images), but ideas and themes. The narrative is complex but not overly complicated, and that complexity gives you the opportunity to keep turning aspects over in your mind, making the small connections and getting the satisfaction of taking it apart and putting it back together again. What's most appealing about the narrative is how it treats the audience as adults - we're not led step by step through everything, but at the same time things aren't needlessly obscured just to preserve a sense of mystery or to give a cheap twist.

It's been reported that there are three stories - this is sort of true and yet not true. The film's core takes place in the here and now, with Hugh Jackman as a research scientist trying to find a cure for cancer. It's personal for him - his wife, Rachel Weisz, is dying from a brain tumor. Jackman's team brings back a sample from a unique tree in the South American jungle. and while experimenting with the bark of the tree, Jackman realizes he may have made an astonishing breakthrough. Meanwhile, Weisz is writing a novel about a conquistador (also played by Jackman) who travels to the New World to find the Biblical Tree of Life for his queen (also played by Weisz). The third strand of the story takes place in the far future, with Jackman (still playing the scientist) hurtling through space in a strange bubble, with only the South American tree to keep him company. At first the intercutting between the stories can be disorienting, but it all quickly makes sense, and by the end of the film the three strands come together in a magnificent way that rivals the narrative flow and tightness of any novel.

Thematically, The Fountain is a phenomenon. The difference between this and Requiem for a Dream - a film I unabashedly love but can rarely watch because it just makes me feel rotten - is galactic. Maturity is going to get thrown around a lot in reviews, and it's fitting. The night before this screening I saw the new Altman film, A Prairie Home Companion, which is about issues of mortality as well. It's interesting to see how an old master, with dozens of films under his belt, and a young whippersnapper, on just his third movie, approach the subject. The answer is the same way - with grace and acceptance. The end of The Fountain left me with an existential peace reminiscent of the way you feel after an intense meditation.

I know that I'm using lots of superlatives here. I would like to tone the rhetoric down, but it's not rhetoric. It's reality. I don't want to create unreasonable expectations, but for me the question about The Fountain isn't "Is this one of the best films made in decades?" but "What are the handful of films in my lifetime as beautiful and profound as this one?"

Aronofsky's not up to his old tricks here - there's no hip hop montage in this film. He's up to new tricks; the rhythmic editing takes the hip hop montage concept out of the realm of film geek gimmick and turns it into a legitimate and exciting tool. He marries sound and cuts to give the film a subtle beat; it wasn't until halfway through the movie that I realized what he was doing. Combined with The Fountain's miraculously short running time, the editing gives what could have been a talking heads drama a very compelling energy.

It isn't just the post-production work that gives it that energy, to be fair. The Fountain was once going to star Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, but after his funding fell through Aronofsky rebounded with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. I don't know what a Pitt/Blanchett Fountain would have been like, but the one we have features two actors doing perhaps the best work of their careers. Weisz doesn't play her dying character as a one-note weeper; she has levels of complexity, layers of fear and acceptance, that she is able to get across in a minimal amount of screentime. Weisz has gorgeous eyes, and she uses them to tell half her story.

The revelation is Jackman. We knew he was charismatic. We knew he could sing and dance. I, for one, didn't know that he could be completely emotionally naked, flaying himself on screen down to his own bare essence. The scenes he plays as the conquistador are good. The scenes he plays in the modern day are affecting and moving. But it's the scenes that he plays in the future that are brilliant. He's sitting alone, bald, in a bubble with a tree amidst the vastness of intergalactic space, and yet he makes these scenes my favorite in the movie. In the bubble he's a madman, a lost soul, a Buddha, all at once. Hugh Jackman has delivered a performance that demands an Academy Award nomination.

The Fountain is a low budget film - the original incarnation was budgeted at 75 million, while this one is only 35 million. Every now and again you can recognize the budget - the South American jungles in the 16th century feel a touch claustrophobic - but Aronofsky makes the budget work for him. The sets are small, but they have a warmth and realness. Even the closeness of the jungle feels like a story point, since this is the 16th century South American jungle in a novel, after all. But one place where the budget isn't felt is in the special effects. In the final act the bubble drifts through the nebula, and the visuals serve as reminders that special effects can do more than sink big boats or destroy the Golden Gate Bridge. The nebula scenes in The Fountain evoke real wonder and awe.

All of that awe and wonder would be pointless if the movie didn't have a serious emotional core. The film is thematically and conceptually dense, but it's also emotionally rich; I've heard the film described as 2001 with a heart, and I don't think that's a terrible example. The relationship between Jackman and Weitz's characters is completely real and totally fleshed out and developed. The actors have to represent a full, rich relationship while enacting the final three days of a very sick person's life, but they cut through the easy pathos to present two people very believably and relatably in love.

There's more to gush about - the score is incredible, and Ethan Suplee and Ellen Burstyn deliver tremendous supporting performances. There are a couple of incredible moments that I can't wait to talk about once everyone has seen the film. The Fountain is the sort of movie that makes me want to write a book about it. What's most important, though, is that The Fountain vaults Aronofsky to a new level as a filmmaker. Before he was a cult director, a fringe talent who appealed to the film geeks and the people who look to the edge. The Fountain's not a mainstream movie - it's really fucking smart, for one thing - but the director who made this movie is a man coming into his own. The Fountain is beautiful, gripping and utterly transcendent. It's the best film of 2006.

9.8 out of 10

Devin Faraci loves The Fountain!

[mamaleh]

Too bad hindsight Oscars aren't awarded. (Just wishful thinking, I know--but I'll bet a lot of Academy voters just weren't prepared to accept the film then. Who knows what they'd think now?)

Ellen

[jo]

To each his own, but this reviewer seems to be missing the point for THE FOUNTAIN. The movie is not exactly sci-fi in outer space, but a contemplative look at life and humanity.

www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/movies/2015/09/29/outer-space-movies-star-wars/73030004/

10 space movies that are out of this world

Space: The final frontier, where no one can hear you scream and the hookers have three breasts. Or at least one of those, depending on which movie you watch and whose imagination has been allowed to run wild in the world of sci-fi.

These 10 films set (at least partially) in outer space are, figuratively and literally, out of this world.


10. “The Fountain” (2006, rated PG-13)

Reviews were mixed and the box-office returns disappointing for this unhinged Darren Aronofsky vanity project and visually arresting fever-dream meditation on mortality. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz star in three parallel stories: one anchoring, modern-day story focusing on Jackman and a terminally ill Weisz as a married couple; one set in Central America circa the Spanish Inquisition, with Jackman playing a conquistador; and one with Jackman as some sort of Zen-gardening space-traveler hurtling through the cosmos in a bubble (it’s even weirder than it sounds). The latter makes “The Fountain” worth the effort, thanks in part to a production design that eschewed CGI in favor of organic macro photography of chemicals and bacteria.

Other films included in list probably do quality as outer-space science fiction -- but the inclusion of THE FOUNTAIN is arguable!

Jo

[jo]

Another blog from someone who has thought of THE FOUNTAIN as a unique arthouse fare --

brightwalldarkroom.tumblr.com/post/256009031/the-fountain-2006

The Fountain (2006)


YOU PULL ME THROUGH TIME.

by Chad P.



When a film as bold, strange, confusing and beautiful as Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain comes along, you can either pick it apart endlessly or simply give yourself over to it. A philosophical art-house love story dolled up as a time-bending science fiction epic, The Fountain is a frustrating and rewarding film, a reminder of art’s ability to connect and transport us, to confuse and perplex us. All of which is probably just a fancy way of saying that this is an incredibly strange film.



The Fountain tells three stories as one larger story, a man’s quest for love and immortality that spans 1,500 years and takes us all the way from the ancient jungles of ‘new Spain’ to a futuristic world on a dying nebula star somewhere in the far reaches of our universe. The thing that connects these things, these stories, is the relationship between a man (Hugh Jackman) and a woman (Rachel Weisz), a love that seems to tie them together eternally, though it’s never entirely clear if all three versions of the characters are intended to be the same two people (and this ambiguity - the fact that I could easily make a valid argument either way on this issue - is quite likely part of Aronofsky’s point).

Let’s start in the present though - the axis around which the rest of the plotlines seem to orbit - where we meet Dr. Tommy Creo (Jackman) and his wife Izzi (Weisz). Izzi has a terminal brain tumor and Tommy, a research scientist, is trying desperately to find some kind of cure to save her life before it’s too late, staying long hours in the lab working on experimental cures with monkeys. However, in the process of his obsessive quest for a cure, he’s neglecting what little time he has left to spend with his dying wife.



For her part, Izzi - who seems to have accepted her fate (which continually crushes Tommy) - is working on a novel entitled “The Fountain” in which a conquistador named Tomas (Jackman again) is sent to the New World by Queen Isabel (Weisz again) to find the mythical Tree of Life. Scenes from his struggles and battles to find the Tree are interwoven throughout the film, though it’s often hard to pinpiont just which storyline is informing which - a move I found innovative and refreshing but will no doubt frustrate a large number of people hoping for a more linear and easily understood experience.



But I haven’t even gotten to the really weird stuff yet.

The third and final plotline (if that’s what we’re calling these various narrative strands) takes place in the 26th century, as a bald man (Jackman, yet again) drifts through space in a bubble, accompanied by only the bark of an apparently dying tree, on his way to some distant nebula believed to be the location of…something. It is this piece of The Fountain’s puzzle that will be most confounding to most - and to be sure, it’s filled to the brim with an aura of pretension and ridiculousness that makes it a very easy target for derision - but in the moments it works, it becomes a rather glorious (if borderline silly) spectacle, light years away from anything you’ve seen on film since Kubrick’s 2001.



If all this sounds a bit much, well, it is - and in a way that’s what I love about The Fountain. You could fairly lodge several complaints against the film and its excesses, but you certainly couldn’t call the thing “standard” or “formulaic” in any way; it’s exactly the kind of thing Hollywood tends to run away from (and, at one time in The Fountain’s long and troubled production history, it did just that - the original film was set to star Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett before star and budget issues brought it crashing down).

I watched The Fountain in a sparsely populated theater in the middle of the day a handful of years ago and somehow, years later, I find myself still as intrigued by it as I originally was on that cold and cloudy December day when, emerging back into the light of day, I felt at once calm and confused. I still haven’t figured a whole lot of it out, and probably never will. But that’s not the point of a film like this; the point is the mood, the visuals, the epic sense of emotion in the film. It’s not perfect - and it’s definitely a bit of an overindulgent mess at times - but it meant something to me, on some level. And in the end, that’s all I’m ever really asking for in a movie.



Chad P. is a writer and the editor-in-chief of Filmosophy. He searches for meaning and time travel opportunities in Seattle.

[foxie]

His acting was incredible but watching it I was very confused and realized if they had taken a segment seperately it might have done better very hard for anyone to understand

[jo]

Again, this Aronofsky movie with stellar acting from Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz gets lauded!


www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/17/13-most-ambitious-movies-ever-made

13 Most Ambitious Movies Ever Made
From Avatar to Star Wars.

By Matt Fowler

In the this movie era of assembly line blockbusters, recycled ideas, and aversion to originality, it's easy to forget that some of the greatest achievements in moviemaking have come from grand impossible ideas, risky unique premises, and unconventional execution.

Gambling visionaries like Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, and more have put it all on the line, laid it all out there, and pushed to take films to new levels of storytelling and technology. By ramping up the quality of special effects, breaking down the typical conventions of screenwriting and editing, and overall just being unequalled badasses, these creative geniuses have given us some truly impressive work. Some projects soared, some stumbled, but all were insanely ambitious for a system not known for going out on a limb.

The Fountain (1999)





At one point, Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain had a huge budget and megastar Brad Pitt in the lead role. Then, things being as they are in Hollywood, the project fell apart. Getting pieced back together years later with Hugh Jackman at the top of the bill and a budget that was half of the original, The Fountain would deliver an impressively budget-sensitive mind-bending trio of storylines, set in different timelines/states of being, dealing with immortality

It was also one of the best-acted movies, featuring a stellar cast ( Hugh, Rachel, Ellen Burstyn,Donna Murphy, etc).


But the release date was 2006! Hugh's first Hollywood movie ( XMEN) was released only in 2000.

2006 was very memorable and remarkable in relation to Hugh Jackmen's career, because the year featured 6 movie releases with Hugh (XMen 3/Scoop/Flushed Away/Happy Feet/The Prestige/The Fountain)!

It was also remarkable that he filmed The Fountain after a brief rest from his yearlong Tony-winning Broadway portrayal of THE BOY FROM OZ. Not only were the performing requirements very different ( TBFO was a musical theatre biopic, with strenuous singing and dancing requirements while THE FOUNTAIN required strong dramatic acting chops and physical stamina of the actor) but that Hugh could segue from musical theatre to arthouse cinema was a true testament to his versatility!


Jo

[jo]

The four movies ( XMEN3/Scoop/The Prestige/The Fountain) of 2006 were also a remarkable representation of genres ( action/black comedy/dramatic thriller/arthouse trifecta).

I think it could only be mirrored by another 4 movies which enjoyed success, filmed one after another ( Real Steel/Les Miserables/The Wolverine/Prisoners) which represented four different genres : family-friendly/dramatic musical/superhero action/dark drama!

Will we see a similar acting arc for Hugh soon again?


PS: One other coincidence : The Fountain was preceded by The Boy from Oz while Les Miserables was preceded by Back on Broadway

Jo

[jo]

Someone used this image as a GIF subject --




And a number of tweets of this unusual ending of The Fountain!

[jo]

A very insightful attempt to explain or rationalize the theme of this movie!

It is no wonder that the film continues to gather people who view it with curiousity and find themselves enthralled or just reflecting on how the movie creates provocative thinking. I think that is the real rationale of Aronofsky's filmic creation - to plant seeds of thought and even doubt and relate them to our own view of human existence.

You may or may not agree with the author of this view ( as discussed in the above video) ... but then again it brings to life even more questions ( which is probably the quest of Darren in this, his personal masterpiece).

Once again, I am very admiring of the acting of Hugh and Rachel, especially in the more quiet and contemplative moments. I think if Hugh had been recognized by the AMPAS with an award, this portrayal should have been the first recognition... and capped by a second one for LES MISERABLES!  I find the portrayal in THE FOUNTAIN even more layered than the one in PRISONERS, which is another instance where those who saw it think that Hugh should have been given at least an Oscar nomination.

Again, another instance where Hugh proves he is so much more than an action star or a musical theatre star!


Jo

[jo]

The influence of THE FOUNTAIN has extended to heavy music offered by a new band --

www.thegauntlet.com/article/30687/Debut-Bad-Omens

On the other end of the spectrum, the record concludes with the sprawling epic “The Fountain.” Tempering an industrialized hum and sweeping soundscapes punctuated by flutes and booming war drums, Alternative Press debuted the cinematic music video.

“We watched The Fountain with Hugh Jackman while we were recording,” he goes on. “It’s a sci-fi thriller romance with an insane plot and 3 different universes. The romantic aspect resonated with me. It’s unique for us and metal at large, because we’re using a lot of atypical instruments.”

[mamaleh]

THE FOUNTAIN was definitely an underappreciated gem. It is spellbinding.

Ellen

[jo]

Hugh has been quoted that he spent almost a year on this acting masterpiece.

*He and Darren met when he was still doing THE BOY FROM OZ, at a backstage visit by Darren after the night's performance at the Imperial. Hugh read the entire script overnight. He and Darren were exchanging emails presumably on the concept and themes ... and the execution.

*He took a long break after TBFO closed ( he also said once that the show almost killed him -- very physically-demanding work)...but the subject of The Fountain did not leave him and continued the exchanges with Darren.

*He went to Montreal for the filming. For once, he said that he did not want his family around too much. It was a very emotionally-draining work. There was one instance after a very emotional dramatic scene that he said he could only make it back to his trailer and could only lie down on the floor!

*Darren was very admiring of Hugh's work ethic...and physical ability. He said Hugh had to undergo minutes (!) in an underwater tank a few times just to get the "floating in space" illusion right!

*The budget was so tight that they did not even have a proper soundstage! What was thought to be CGIs were not really CGIs...but some inventive real-life scenes that were made to look like science fiction.

*When the movie was done -- Darren shopped it around in key European festivals. Darren ( and presumably Warner Bros) turned down the condition of the Cannes Film Festival to show it NOT as a film in competition...but only like a curiousity piece in one of the events. Eventually, it landed as an entry in the Venice Film Festival. The first critical review was a complete disaster ( it gave it something like a 1 out of 4 rating). In one of the public screenings, some members of the audience started booing it! One famous Latin American director who works for Hollywood (can't remember now whether it was Cuaron or somebody else) stood up and challenged the booing leader to a fistfight!...Years later, Cannes woulf invite Darren to head the Panel of Judges for that year -- poetic justice indeed!

*Presumably, Warner no longer wanted to extend its potential loss on the movie...and it opened only briefly for a short period! When the DVD was about to be launched, Warner refused to fund any director's commentary to accompany the piece. Darren did one anyway and uploaded it to a site!

*If you have the DVD, there is a special feature where Rachel Weisz ( then Aronofsky's longtime romantic partner) interviews Hugh Jackman in the makeup room! Very insightful!

*One of the most beautiful and heartfelt reviews was written by a respected writer on a film site, almost like a love letter. It was written by Devin Faraci.

www.chud.com/7133/review-fountain-the/



*Over the years, the movie gained almost a cultish following, so much so that its difficult theme is still the subject of contentious discussions. But there have been revisionist thinking about the movie. One filmsite even acknowledged it as one of the top ten films of the decade recently!

Jo

[jo]

Here's the Faraci review fully reprinted --

REVIEW: FOUNTAIN, THE

written by
Devin Faraci


posted on
07.14.2006


There’s a moment in the “space bubble” segment of The Fountain where I realized the tattoos on Hugh Jackman’s arms are counting off years, like the rings inside the tree sitting behind him. It’s one of those moments that sent shivers down my spine because of the way it combines concept, theme and imagery into one perfect visual moment. There are a lot of scenes like that in The Fountain, scenes filled with subtle revelations and understandings. I walked out of the film dumbstruck with awe, having just seen something brilliant.

Brilliant is really the only word I can use to describe the film. It took Darren Aronofsky years to get his movie made, but every day was worth it. The finished work is wonderful, is moving, is stunning. I may have walked out of the movie dumbstruck but I spent the next few days wishing I could talk to someone about it. The movie stayed in my mind; not just images (and there are so many gorgeous images), but ideas and themes. The narrative is complex but not overly complicated, and that complexity gives you the opportunity to keep turning aspects over in your mind, making the small connections and getting the satisfaction of taking it apart and putting it back together again. What’s most appealing about the narrative is how it treats the audience as adults – we’re not led step by step through everything, but at the same time things aren’t needlessly obscured just to preserve a sense of mystery or to give a cheap twist.


It’s been reported that there are three stories – this is sort of true and yet not true. The film’s core takes place in the here and now, with Hugh Jackman as a research scientist trying to find a cure for cancer. It’s personal for him – his wife, Rachel Weisz, is dying from a brain tumor. Jackman’s team brings back a sample from a unique tree in the South American jungle. and while experimenting with the bark of the tree, Jackman realizes he may have made an astonishing breakthrough. Meanwhile, Weisz is writing a novel about a conquistador (also played by Jackman) who travels to the New World to find the Biblical Tree of Life for his queen (also played by Weisz). The third strand of the story takes place in the far future, with Jackman (still playing the scientist) hurtling through space in a strange bubble, with only the South American tree to keep him company. At first the intercutting between the stories can be disorienting, but it all quickly makes sense, and by the end of the film the three strands come together in a magnificent way that rivals the narrative flow and tightness of any novel.

Thematically, The Fountain is a phenomenon. The difference between this and Requiem for a Dream – a film I unabashedly love but can rarely watch because it just makes me feel rotten – is galactic. Maturity is going to get thrown around a lot in reviews, and it’s fitting. The night before this screening I saw the new Altman film, A Prairie Home Companion, which is about issues of mortality as well. It’s interesting to see how an old master, with dozens of films under his belt, and a young whippersnapper, on just his third movie, approach the subject. The answer is the same way – with grace and acceptance. The end of The Fountain left me with an existential peace reminiscent of the way you feel after an intense meditation.

I know that I’m using lots of superlatives here. I would like to tone the rhetoric down, but it’s not rhetoric. It’s reality. I don’t want to create unreasonable expectations, but for me the question about The Fountain isn’t “Is this one of the best films made in decades?” but “What are the handful of films in my lifetime as beautiful and profound as this one?”

Aronofsky’s not up to his old tricks here – there’s no hip hop montage in this film. He’s up to new tricks; the rhythmic editing takes the hip hop montage concept out of the realm of film geek gimmick and turns it into a legitimate and exciting tool. He marries sound and cuts to give the film a subtle beat; it wasn’t until halfway through the movie that I realized what he was doing. Combined with The Fountain’s miraculously short running time, the editing gives what could have been a talking heads drama a very compelling energy.


It isn’t just the post-production work that gives it that energy, to be fair. The Fountain was once going to star Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, but after his funding fell through Aronofsky rebounded with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. I don’t know what a Pitt/Blanchett Fountain would have been like, but the one we have features two actors doing perhaps the best work of their careers. Weisz doesn’t play her dying character as a one-note weeper; she has levels of complexity, layers of fear and acceptance, that she is able to get across in a minimal amount of screentime. Weisz has gorgeous eyes, and she uses them to tell half her story.



The revelation is Jackman. We knew he was charismatic. We knew he could sing and dance. I, for one, didn’t know that he could be completely emotionally naked, flaying himself on screen down to his own bare essence. The scenes he plays as the conquistador are good. The scenes he plays in the modern day are affecting and moving. But it’s the scenes that he plays in the future that are brilliant. He’s sitting alone, bald, in a bubble with a tree amidst the vastness of intergalactic space, and yet he makes these scenes my favorite in the movie. In the bubble he’s a madman, a lost soul, a Buddha, all at once. Hugh Jackman has delivered a performance that demands an Academy Award nomination.



The Fountain is a low budget film – the original incarnation was budgeted at 75 million, while this one is only 35 million. Every now and again you can recognize the budget – the South American jungles in the 16th century feel a touch claustrophobic – but Aronofsky makes the budget work for him. The sets are small, but they have a warmth and realness. Even the closeness of the jungle feels like a story point, since this is the 16th century South American jungle in a novel, after all. But one place where the budget isn’t felt is in the special effects. In the final act the bubble drifts through the nebula, and the visuals serve as reminders that special effects can do more than sink big boats or destroy the Golden Gate Bridge. The nebula scenes in The Fountain evoke real wonder and awe.


All of that awe and wonder would be pointless if the movie didn’t have a serious emotional core. The film is thematically and conceptually dense, but it’s also emotionally rich; I’ve heard the film described as 2001 with a heart, and I don’t think that’s a terrible example. The relationship between Jackman and Weitz’s characters is completely real and totally fleshed out and developed. The actors have to represent a full, rich relationship while enacting the final three days of a very sick person’s life, but they cut through the easy pathos to present two people very believably and relatably in love.

There’s more to gush about – the score is incredible, and Ethan Suplee and Ellen Burstyn deliver tremendous supporting performances. There are a couple of incredible moments that I can’t wait to talk about once everyone has seen the film. The Fountain is the sort of movie that makes me want to write a book about it. What’s most important, though, is that The Fountain vaults Aronofsky to a new level as a filmmaker. Before he was a cult director, a fringe talent who appealed to the film geeks and the people who look to the edge. The Fountain’s not a mainstream movie – it’s really fucking smart, for one thing – but the director who made this movie is a man coming into his own. The Fountain is beautiful, gripping and utterly transcendent. It’s the best film of 2006.



9.8 out of 10

[jo]

Once again, here's another very insightful interpretation of the movie and its message --




I noted one respondee on the Feedback section saying that he has bought at least 7 copies, of which he has given away 6 copies to people he thought would be enthralled with it, as he was. I have done something similar. I also took two people whom I thought would find it an excellent intellectual food for thought to its showing in the cinema. One was cynical...while the other was very thoughtful (sadly, this person has passed on, after very prolonged bout with cancer). I hope the messages suggested by the movie has brought people closer to Darren's focus on the meaning of life and death.

A sad movie...but at the same time, it does bring some kind of inner peace.


Jo

[jo]

..... Children of Men had its world premiere at the 63rd Venice International Film Festival on 3 September 2006 ..... Venice International Film Festival.

Children of Men is a highly acclaimed film directed by Alfonso Cuaron which gained a lot of critical accolades.

The film had its world premiere at the 63rd Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2006.[59] Several critics booed The Fountain at the festival's press screening, while the film received a 10-minute standing ovation at the public screening the following evening.[19]

In one of the screenings a report broke on a near-fisticuff between an audience member ( who was disparaging The Fountain) who was in a heated argument with a famous film director who was defending Aronofsky's movie.


Now I have finally resolved which director it was -- it happened 10 years ago and I could no longer remember who it was, except I knew he was from the Latin Americas. It must be Alfonso Cuaron -- who almost got into a fistfight over The Fountain. Gracias, Senor Alfonso!


Jo

[jo]

As THE FOUNTAIN soon marks its 10rh anniversary of release ( November 22), we read again about hindsight praise for it.

thenerdrecites.com/looking-back-at-the-fountain-darren-aronofskys-masterful-meditation-on-love-and-immortality-3661/

[jo]

On the occasion of its coming 10th Anniversary, THE FOUNTAIN will once again play on the big screen as it is re-released in Austin, Texas!

theplaylist.net/exclusive-mondocon-will-host-10th-anniversary-screening-fountain-clint-mansells-score-receive-first-ever-vinyl-release-20160915/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Exclusive: MondoCon Will Host 10th Anniversary Screening Of ‘The Fountain,’ Clint Mansell’s Score To Receive First Ever Vinyl Release

Edward Davis
September 15, 2016 9:00 am



It’s hard to believe a decade his passed since Darren Aronofsky released his grand, sweeping epic “The Fountain.” The director’s soaring vision about love, death, and existence remains one of his most powerfully realized pictures, combining ambitious visuals, a terrific soundtrack, and moving performances. It’s a film that truly deserves to be seen on the big screen, and fans will get a chance to have that experience once again, and much more.

MondoCon will celebrate the 10th anniversary of “The Fountain” with a special screening event, followed by an in-depth conversation about the film, its music, its the impact with composer Clint Mansell, conducted by Brian Satterwhite. And that’s not all. Mondo will also be releasing the score on vinyl for the first time ever.

The score is one of Mansell’s crowning achievements, and sees the composer working with Kronos Quartet and post-rock band Mogwai to create the otherworldly sounds that power Aronofsky’s incredible story in “The Fountain.” It’s music that manages to be both intimate and profoundly, universally moving all at once.

“…more than any of my works, the demand for ‘The Fountain’ on vinyl has been building incessantly over the years. We’ve all waited a long time for this and, to be honest, I never really thought it would happen,” Mansell said in a statement. “But, once again, Mondo delivers. I was blown away by their release of ‘Black Swan’ last year, so I’m excited that we get to do it all again with ‘The Fountain.’ Aronofsky! Mansell! Mondo! Death Waltz! ‘The Fountain’! Nuff Said!”

Featuring new liner notes, an interview with Clint Mansell, and artwork by Nicole Gustafsson, “The Fountain” will be pressed on 180 gram vinyl, and available to MondoCon attendees in a limited special edition of 500 copies. The soundtrack will also be available in a general release edition starting in November.

MondoCon runs from October 22nd and 23rd in Austin, TX at AFS Cinema and Holiday Inn Midtown Conference Center. Check out the tracklist and artwork for “The Fountain” below.

“The Fountain” Tracklist
01. The Last Man
02. Holy Dread!
03. Tree Of Life
04. Stay With Me
05. Death Is A Disease
06. Xibalba
07. First Snow
08. Finish It
09. Death Is The Road To Awe
10. Together We Will Live Foreverthe-fountain-art-by-nicole-gustafsson

[jo]

Once again, another fresh perspective on interpreting the message of THE FOUNTAIN!




collider.com/the-fountain-explained/#image

‘The Fountain’ Has Nothing to Do with Time
by Matt Goldberg     7 hours ago


I adore Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain. It’s one of my all-time favorite films. I get something new from it every time I watch it, and I watch it at least once a year. I’ve listened to Clint Mansell’s score countless times. The film features Aronofsky at his most earnest and operatic, and while the film flopped when it was released ten years ago, it has gone on to gain a cult following.

However, there also seems to be a common misconception with how the film approaches its narrative. It’s a problem that likely began with the film’s trailer:

As you can see from the trailer, it lays out the three narratives as existing in three time periods: 1500, 2000, and 2500. So if you saw the trailer, you would assume that’s how Aronofsky structured his film. While it’s clear that what’s happening in “1500” is Isabel Creo’s (Rachel Weisz) story “The Fountain” about a conquistador who travels to find The Fountain of Youth in order to empower his Queen, and that in the year 2000, Tommy Creo (Hugh Jackman) is a scientist searching to find a cure for his wife’s illness, we’re left to assume that in the year 2500, “Tom Creo” (as he’s referred to in the credits) is now traveling in a spaceship of some kind with the tree that has allowed him to extend his life.

But that’s not actually what’s happening, and the “future” Tom Creo isn’t in the future at all. There’s nothing in the film itself to suggest that the year is 2500 or a future of any kind. In fact, all of the evidence points to something far richer but more complicated: The Tom Creo we see in the bubble is Tommy Creo’s mind.
It’s understandable that some people would think The Fountain is a story that deals with time. Some have even gone so far as to create a “linear” cut that puts the film in “chronological” order. And I get that. If this is a story about The Fountain of Youth, then one would assume that a character who discovered The Fountain in the form of the Tree of Life, would be living in the distant future.

Except The Fountain isn’t about The Fountain of Youth. It’s about death and creation and reconciling the two. The film even takes time to point out how the two are intertwined when Isabel talks about Xibalba:

Izzi: This is an actual Mayan book. It explains the Creation myth. You see that’s first father. He’s the very first human.
Tommy Creo: Hum. Is he dead?
 
Izzi: He sacrificed himself to make the world.
 
[pause]
 
Izzi: That’s the tree of life bursting out of his stomach.
 
Tommy Creo: Hey, come.
 
Izzi: Listen. His body became the trees’ roots. They spread and formed the earth. His soul became the branches rising up forming the sky. All the remained is first father’s head. His children hung in in the heavens creating Xibalba.
 
Tommy Creo: Xibalba. The star, eh,
 
[corrects himself]
 
Tommy Creo: Nebula.
 
Izzi: So what do you think?
 
Tommy Creo: About?
 
Izzi: That idea. Death as an act of creation.

For Tommy, a doctor who has dedicated himself to stopping death, he can’t fathom how death could be an act of creation. After Izzi dies, he angrily tells Dr. Lillian Guzetti (Ellen Burstyn), “Death is a disease, it’s like any other. And there’s a cure. A cure – and I will find it.”

Image via Warner Bros.
The arc of The Fountain isn’t about a man who found The Fountain of Youth or The Tree of Life, ate its bark, and lived to be over 500 years old so that he could rejuvenate the Tree in a dying star. To assume that the scenes in space bubble are literally happening deprives The Fountain of its central conflict, which is about Tommy accepting death and using that to fuel the creation of finishing Isabel’s novel.

When we see Tom Creo in the bubble interacting with Izzi, they’re not preludes to flashbacks. They’re thoughts interfering in Tom’s mind. For Tom, he can’t finish Isabel’s novel because to do so would be to accept her death. “Finish it,” are the worst words to him because if the novel is unfinished, then Isabel’s work, and by proxy Isabel, lives on. He literally can’t close the book on their relationship even though her dying wish was for him to finish the novel.

The climax of the film is Tom learning to accept death, something he has refused to do throughout the story because it’s too painful. When he finally accepts it, we see Tom Creo interact with Tomas’ storyline in the novel “The Fountain”. That scene isn’t Tom teleporting back in time to reveal himself as “First Father” to the Chieftain. What we’re witnessing is an act of creation. Tommy (in the present day) is finishing the story, and the “future” Tom is his mind penning that creation. He changes Izzi’s ending, which had the Chieftain killing Tomas and instead the Chieftain sacrifices himself in the presence of a figure he believes to be “First Father”.

Image via Warner Bros.
What Aronofsky is showing us isn’t a guy in the distant future getting hit by an exploding nebula. He’s showing us in the abstract the act of accepting death and how it can lead to creation. Tom is now penning the end of “The Fountain” where Tomas reaches The Tree of Life, greedily drinks its sap to heal his wounds, and then is overwhelmed by the power of the Fountain, and dies in its thrall. Like Isabel’s story, it’s autobiographical. She began it as a tale about a woman hoping that her beloved could save her, but Tommy ends it almost as a mea culpa. For Tommy, Tomas is undone—much like he was—by refusing to accept death and chasing eternal life at his own peril.

Of course, how do you sell that in a 2-minute, 27-second trailer? How do you tell audiences, “Hey, all this cool stuff with bald Hugh Jackman in a bubble going through space? That’s actually an abstract representation of the character’s mind as he learns to accept death and finish his late wife’s novel. Coming soon to a theater near you!” It’s much easier to say, “Yeah, this is just three time periods. Roll with it.”

It was an easy sell that did a disservice to the story Aronofsky was trying to tell. While some may argue that The Fountain romanticizes the ugliness of death, it could also be argued that raging against the inevitable shortens our lives in ways we can’t perceive. Instead of enjoying the first snow with the person we love the most, we push them away because we can’t face the pain their death will bring. For The Fountain, we can only move forward after we’re willing to embrace the end.

Image via Warner Bros.

There are responses in the feedback section that challenge the above-articulated perspective. While others add how they view it -- differing but also converging on the message of the acceptance of death. This movie has certainly provoked so many discussions and disagreements and one even went as far as to say that maybe even Aronofsky did not fully understand what he eventually created - LOL! But there is also the point that this is an excellent acting performance by Hugh Jackman.

Some say it is PRISONERS or THE PRESTIGE ( for those who do not likely or fully appreciate the dramatic musical LES MISERABLES). But Hugh's Tomas/Tom/Tommy/ is a much more layered performance than his avenging Keller Dover or his obsessive Robert Angier!

Wasn't it exactly 10 years ago today that THE FOUNTAIN was released -- on November 22, 2006!

And look at the journey it has led over the years! Ten years on, and some people are still raving about it


Jo

[jo]

Here's another retrospective on its 10th year since release -

www.firstshowing.net/2016/the-truth-aronofskys-the-fountain-is-an-underrated-masterpiece/

EDITORIALS
Looking Back: Aronofsky's 'The Fountain' is an Underrated Masterpiece
by Dan Marcus
November 22, 2016


When you think of auteur filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, you probably think of Requiem for a Dream or Black Swan. However, when I think of Darren Aronofsky, I can't help but gravitate toward what I think is his most underrated film: The Fountain, released in 2006. The science fiction love story, starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz playing essentially the same characters over three timelines, was released ten years ago today with little fanfare. The film was blasted by critics and made very little at the box office. However, I fell in love with the film from the moment I gazed my eyes on the first frame ten years ago. Let's explore why I think the film is an underrated masterpiece and one of Aronofsky's best in his filmography.

The road to Aronofsky's fountain of youth story stems far earlier than 2006. The Fountain was a true labor of love for Aronofsky, who first came up with the idea with his co-writer and creative partner Ari Handel around the late 90's. He brokered a deal with Warner Bros to produce the film in 2001, with Brad Pitt attached to star. If you've read the graphic novel version of The Fountain – which is based on Aronofsky's original script that he wrote in the early 00's – then you know the grandiose scope and epic scale Aronofsky intended to tell this intimate story. If you haven't, I recommend you check it out (it's affordably available on Amazon). It's still the same story Aronofsky eventually made, but told much differently. It presents a very interesting alternative scenario where The Fountain could have been a much different film.

Unfortunately for Aronofsky – although, soon to be argued, I believe fortunately for us the audience – Brad Pitt had to drop out of The Fountain in late 2002. If you've seen the behind-the-scenes footage on the film's DVD, it covers some of the production before it was ultimately scrapped. It's refreshingly raw and features the moment Aronofsky had to tell his entire production team that Warner Bros was pulling the plug. It's a tender moment for any filmmaker that has had to struggle with the reality of making films on sometimes shoestring budgets with very little support. There's something very tangible about seeing a filmmaker such as Aronofsky deal with the very same struggles, especially when earlier in the footage you see him and his producing partners in complete awe of the sets that were being built for the film.

Even though Aronofsky had to re-conceptualize his film with a new lead (Jackman), a smaller budget and a truncated script, I would argue these concessions ultimately made for a better film. What The Fountain lacks in Braveheart-esque scope it absolutely makes up for in raw, intimate and incredibly personal drama. The true nature of The Fountain's narrative has been debated ever since the film's release. The film's story finds Tom the neurologist in modern day trying to find a cure to save his dying wife, Izzy (Weisz). Izzy is working on a story, which we must assume is the story of Tomas the conquistador (also played by Jackman) on an epic journey to find the fountain of youth for his queen, Queen Isabella (also played by Weisz). This is all interspersed with a narrative presumably set far in the future, where Tommy the space traveler (again Jackman) is in deep space in a self-contained biosphere on a search for the golden nebula called Xibalba.

Even though the previews and marketing materials (as well as the film itself) may lead you to believe we are following two immortals over three time periods, that's not how I chose to interpret the film. I've always considered the film to be strikingly stripped down and realistic, even given its science fiction/fantasy premise. In my mind, the real story is the one being told in present day. Tom is so obdurate to save his wife's life that he is blinded by resilient determination. He refuses to take a break from work to spend time with Izzy to venture for a walk. He is so self-absorbed in the pursuit to save Izzy's life that nothing else matters, not even spending time with his dying wife. I believe that is the defining reality of the film, giving us a poignant message about accepting our fate and the fragility of our lives.

There's nothing more important than the present, and I believe that is the key message The Fountain is trying to convey. I think the past storyline featuring Tomas and Queen Isabella is the story Izzy is working on. As the film progresses, Izzy says she knows the ending, but won't reveal it to Tom. In one of her final scenes, she tells Tom that she wants him to write the ending to the story… even though he doesn't know it. I think this is an important moment, a moment where Izzy is basically trying to get Tom on-board with the idea of dealing with the grief he will soon discover with her passing. Izzy has already accepted her fate – the ending of her own story. Izzy could tell Tom the ending, but that's not the point. Izzy wants Tom to discover the ending for himself, perhaps one last gift to Tom to give him something to consider as he ends up grieving the loss of the person most special to him in his entire world.


I've been on a lot of forums, seen a lot of video essays and read a lot of editorials which try to analyze and dissect the meaning of The Fountain. I think the beauty of the film is that you can interpret the film any way you want. I also believe that is a testament to a brilliant film, where you can watch it and essentially create your own interpretation of what happened. So, in regards to the narrative featuring Tommy, I believe that was intentionally left vague. I've seen arguments where people think it is real, a future where Tommy found the cure for death and hopes to breathe new life into the tree of life he carries with him in his biosphere bubble. I've heard theories Izzy is a part of that tree of life and that Tommy hopes to bring back Izzy by reaching the center of the nebula. I think these theories are all very valid and speak volumes of the film's storytelling which allows you to make so many different assertions based on what you choose to believe.

For myself, I choose to believe the futuristic narrative is the ending of Izzy's book. Aronofsky luminously crafts a story that feels so tangible and real, focusing on how we deal with grief and how sometimes it can define us, if we let it. I think for most of the film that grief, in its many shapes and forms, has defined Tom as he struggles to accept a reality where his wife is no longer in it. I think the ending is Tom finally accepting that reality by finishing the story as Izzy instructed him to do before her death. In this ending, he has found the cure for death and he has journeyed into the deepest regions of space to find his own acceptance and understanding of what this grief has taught him. It is a metaphorical ending for Tom, Tomas and Tommy. I think anyone looking for a literal explanation of the film is going to be disappointed, as Aronofsky himself refused to confirm or deny any of the film's lingering plot questions during his commentary for the film.

However, you may find one clue in Aronofsky's commentary. In the opening moments, Aronofsky says that he wishes the audience to interpret the story as they see fit – and that is where I find the overarching brilliance of the film. Of course, everyone is going to construe what exactly makes a "good film" differently. We all have different tastes and we all have our own unique way of identifying art. I think what makes The Fountain a masterpiece is the way it allows you, the audience, to interpret the film any way you like. It could be a science fiction story about two immortals over three periods of time. It could be about the quest for the fountain of youth. It could also be one man's struggle to accept the brittleness of life, the imminent reality of death and the grief that comes along with it.



I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the performances, visuals and the musical score for the film. I've always been a fan of Hugh Jackman, from his time as Logan/Wolverine in the X-Men movies to his great performances in Les Misérables, Prisoners, The Prestige and so many others. I think his performance in The Fountain may be a favorite of mine. There's such a visceral, heartbreaking rawness to his performance. You believe his determination to save his wife. You believe he would spend every waking moment trying to find a cure, including going as far as venturing to the outer reaches of space to bring her back.


You also believe he loves his wife with every iota of his being, whether how he looks at her when she's not watching or how he is consumed by inconsolable rage when she passes. There's not a moment of falseness in Jackman's performance. There is a scene, no matter how many times I've seen it, where I lose it every time: the moment where Tom remembers he lost his wedding ring and tattoos the outline of the ring on his finger. It's absolutely devastating and Jackman sells that moment unlike anything I've seen him do in any other movie he's ever done.



Rachel Weisz is also exquisite in the film. Weisz's Izzy has the burden of already knowing her fate, having accepted it presumably a while before the film's narrative begins. Weisz's Izzy must be strong for Tom, knowing how hard this will ultimately be on him. Weisz's performance is brave, resolute, but also sadly bittersweet. In her last scene with Jackman – at least chronologically in the primary present-day storyline – Weisz brings a soft, quiet understanding to Izzy that makes you resonate with her and respect her all at once for her strength and courage. It's a beautiful performance.

The stunning performances of the film are also assisted by gorgeous visuals, thanks to cinematographer Matthew Libatique. Aronofsky and Libatique are frequent collaborators and that developed working relationship shines in The Fountain with some of the best work of their careers. What impresses me most about the visuals of The Fountain is how Aronofsky and Libatique realized the space scenes. Unlike most science fiction films dealing with outer space, Aronofsky eschewed computer generated visual effects. To create the visuals of the biospheric ship, Aronofsky and his team opted for macro photography and digital mattes, emphasizing image enhancement and set extensions. The end results are images created with very little computer graphics, leaving you the viewer with an other-worldly aesthetic that is both stunningly gorgeous and strikingly unique. I honestly can't say I've seen a science fiction film that looks as vividly arresting and original as the outer space scenes do in The Fountain.

The performances and visuals were also accentuated by Clint Mansell's score. I don't even know where to begin describing Mansell's score. To be upfront, I consider myself to be a considerable film score fan. I've been lost in the world of film scores ever since I was a kid. The score for The Fountain was one of the first original soundtrack albums I've ever purchased. Mansell's work is honestly one of the best film scores in at least a decade – and I don't mean that as hyperbole, either. Mansell completely elevates the material, adding so much richness, emotion and feeling to what was already an emotionally overwhelming experience. "Death is the Road to Awe" is transcendent, a stirring piece of music that completely overwhelms you and takes you to another place entirely. The score and the visuals alone make The Fountain a masterpiece for me.


That's the grand beauty of The Fountain, though. I'm sure to a lot of different people the film goes over their heads, or it is considered too pretentious to truly be enjoyed. I would argue you don't need to understand the film to enjoy it. While this might be an egregious analogy, many people don't understand 2001: A Space Odyssey either and I don't believe that film is meant to be completely understood as well. Honestly, some films aren't meant to be understood on an intellectual or even thematic level. Some films are meant to be experienced and meant to be felt. That may very well come off as pretentious, but for me Aronofsky's The Fountain is an immeasurably emotional experience that has left an indelible impact on me ten years later. It's a film I proudly call a masterpiece. Do you agree? Do you think The Fountain is underrated?

[mamaleh]

Ah, if they only had an Oscar category for the Most Underrated Film of the Last Ten Years. I re-watch key scenes from time to time. Still a mesmerizing experience.

Ellen

[jo]

This VERY LONG ( but if you're a fan of THE FOUNTAIN, it is quite insightful) feature from SLANT MAGAZINE was written in 2010 and serves as a retrospective of Aronofsky's film career up to that point ( The Wrestler) and it is a series of conversations re Aronofsky's cinematic creations. Let me highlight the portion that relate to THE FOUNTAIN --

www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/the-conversations-darren-aronofsky-part-i/P3

by Jason Bellamy And Ed Howard on November 24, 2010 in Film

EH: That's well said. Despite my overall problems with Requiem for a Dream, moments like that do confirm Aronofsky's undeniable talent as a director, his ability to hit all the right emotional buttons. He always aims to overwhelm, to thrust his audience into the subjectivity of the experiences he's filming, and if this impulse sometimes leads to the numbing lack of subtlety that afflicts this film, it's also the wellspring of Aronofsky's best traits as a director. His next film, The Fountain, would bear this idea out, as it indulges every bit as fully as his first two features in emotional excess and stylistic restlessness, but somehow constitutes a leap to the next level in Aronofsky's filmmaking. Maybe, as you suggested earlier, the long gestation period between Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain allowed Aronofsky the time he needed to mature and to develop his singular vision more fully. The Fountain, though, was initially slated to be produced in 2002, as a big-budget feature starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, until this version of the film fell apart in mid-shooting due to “creative differences” with Pitt. Aronofsky then returned to the project two years later, cutting the budget by eschewing CGI effects, and replacing his former stars with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz.


The film is divided into three stories, which flow into each other and relate to each other in somewhat ambiguous ways. The central story, arguably, is the tragic romance between medical researcher Tommy Creo (Jackman) and his wife Izzi (Weisz). Izzi is dying of a tumor, and Tommy is desperate to discover a miracle cure before he loses her; like other Aronofsky heroes, he pours himself obsessively into his work. Jackman also plays a conquistador who is searching for a mythical Mayan tree of life at the behest of his queen (Weisz again, of course), who is under the siege of a religious inquisitor (Stephen McHattie). And Jackman also plays a bald mystic hurtling through space within a bubble of air that contains the now-dying tree. The structure of the film is ingenious, as these three stories together express the never-ending quest of humanity to defeat death, to overcome the transience of existence: the mystic is a future incarnation of Tommy, or perhaps Tommy himself, his life elongated by the tree's power, just as Tommy is the conquistador reborn in a new form. At the same time, the conquistador's tale is woven into the film as the novel that Izzi was writing in her final months, a novel that she purposefully leaves unfinished, bequeathing it to Tommy to write the final chapter. And the man in space, rather than literally being Tommy far in the future, is perhaps better understood as a symbolic construct, inhabiting an abstracted mental landscape in which he can work through his loss and his desperate desire to overcome death.


Aronofsky leaves much of this unspoken. After two films of stark literalism and heavy-handed symbolism, Aronofsky allows The Fountain's symbols and themes to be more free-flowing and organic. The film culminates with a sequence that, in some ways, mirrors the interconnected structure of Requiem for a Dream's finale, cutting between multiple stories and ratcheting up the pace so that images and events hurtle by at a dizzying speed. And yet the effect here is sublime. The film is about the quest for eternal life, but it ultimately leads towards an affirmation of mortal life, of the fleeting pleasures to be found in a finite existence. Tommy completes Izzi's novel by leading the conquistador to his encounter with the tree of life, an encounter that suggests that, if there is an eternal life to be found, it is not on the terms we would wish it. At the same time, the man in space allows Tommy to rewrite parts of his own past with Izzi, revisiting a crucial juncture and turning away from the obsession that consumed him in the final months of his wife's life. Instead of channeling his negative emotions into futile attempts to cheat death, he goes for a walk in the snow with his wife, enjoying the brief remainder of the time they have together. And finally he plants a tree over her grave, a gesture that resonates with the conquistador's fate, with the man in the bubble's fate, and with the Mayan myth of the “first father,” the story that structures Izzi's novel.


Earlier in the film, the inquisitor says, “Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Our skin and blood, the iron bars of our confinement.” Though he is superficially opposed to the queen's quest for eternal life, in fact his is simply an alternative (and particularly grisly) form of the obsession, a form that rejects earthly materiality in favor of an eternal spiritual life after death. Aronofsky's film ultimately suggests that this obsession with the end of life, whether it takes shape as science or religion, prevents people from engaging with life on its own terms. Where Pi and Requiem for a Dream were about people who succumbed in various ways to their obsessions, negating their lives in the process, The Fountain is about acceptance, about the rejection of the dangerous obsessions that distract us from the pleasures and heartaches that make life worth living.



 

JB: We agree on the last part, but not quite on how the film gets there. Your description of the The Fountain's three parts suggests a level of disparateness that I contend doesn't actually exist. I agree that Aronofsky leaves the unity of the film's past, present and future chapters refreshingly unspoken, and thus somewhat ambiguous, which explains why many of the film's original reviews suggested The Fountain's chapters are unified in theme alone. (Another popular interpretation, perhaps unduly influenced by the film's somewhat misleading trailer, suggests that the chapters should be read rather literally—presenting multiple incarnations of a love that spans thousands of years.) But while I'm hesitant to imply that a film this rich has only one interpretation, having seen The Fountain at least 10 times I'm as confident as ever that, structurally speaking, there's only one way to read it.


In my mind, The Fountain has one “true” narrative—Tommy and Izzi in the present. The story of Thomas the conquistador is, as you said, a narrative imagined by Izzi for her book, which ends with Thomas' confrontation with the guardian of the tree of life. The story of Tom the futuristic Zen astronaut, then, is Tommy's imagined conclusion to Izzi's book. To understand how these stories fit together, we must first understand the motives for their creation. Izzi's book is her attempt to reconcile her own death. The inquisitor represents the tumor taking over Izzi's body, claiming new territory bit by bit and charting each conquest with blood on a map. Thomas' search for the tree of life mirrors Tommy's relentless pursuit for a miracle cure—one man overseas, the other one holed up in his lab, both men consumed by their efforts to overcome death. Though it's never explicitly stated, I think it's fair to assume that when Izzi began writing her story she was trying to justify Tommy's absence in her final days, to herself and even to him. Eventually, though, Izzi realizes that Tommy won't find the cure, and that the only way that she can be with Tommy eternally is for both of them to believe in some kind of life after death. Hence Izzi's decision to make Tommy finish her story, because ultimately the discovery he needs to make is a spiritual and emotional one. He must come to terms with death.


At first it seems odd that Tommy's final chapter would thrust the story ahead several thousand years, giving us a somewhat new character, futuristic Tom, but in retrospect it makes perfect sense. The Tom chapter borrows from Izzi's fascination with Mayan culture, with Izzi represented by a dying tree and Tom racing to get Izzi to Xiabalba, a nebula wrapped around a dying star “where souls go to be reborn.” Tom, with his tattooed ring finger, is Tommy's vision of his future self, perhaps imagined under the assumption that he will cure aging like a disease. On his arm are various tattoos that, like tree rings, trace Tom's history with Izzi. But one of the rings remains incomplete, and when Tom goes to ink in the rest of that tattoo, he imagines Izzi in her hospital bed and can't go on, can't get closure (figuratively and literally), can't accept her death.


Throughout the Tom chapter, Izzi's voice haunts him: “Finish it!” It's as if Tommy has spent a thousand years—in this case figuratively or, I suppose, literally—avoiding the end of Izzi's story. But eventually, after remembering their past once again, he gives in. “All right,” he says, touching his ring finger. “I trust you. Take me. Show me.” It's in that moment that Tom (and thus Tommy) realizes he's going to die. In that moment he sacrifices his scientific outlook on the world for one of faith. And so it is that Thomas, facing the flaming sword guarding the tree of light, becomes Tom, in a meditative pose, willing to be struck down, willing to face death, willing to believe that somehow this isn't the end. It's that acceptance that leads to “eternal life,” just a different one than he was looking for—a spiritual, religious view of everlasting life, rather than Tommy's scientific view of life in bodily form.


I go into detail about this reading mainly because I think it reveals how layered The Fountain is, how focused, how harmonious. As we continue to talk about the film, there are recurring themes that, yes, unite these chapters. But these themes crop up in each story precisely because it's one story being told: a story of a husband and wife struggling to deal with her imminent death.



 
EH: I don't think our readings are quite as different as you suggest. I agree, certainly, that the “real” story of The Fountain is the romance of Tommy and Izzi and their process of dealing with her approaching death. The other two stories serve as metaphorical constructs that reinforce this central story and its themes. And more than that, the two “fictional” stories within the film represent the two main characters' attempts to grapple with death through storytelling: just as Izzi writes her coming death as a mythic adventure with Tommy as her conquistador, battling futilely but bravely for her sake, Tommy tries to rewrite his own past from an imagined vantage point in the distant future. Though Aronofsky does leave room for the whole film to be read literally as a story of reincarnation that spans thousands of years, I don't think that's an especially convincing or enlightening reading. On that much we agree.


It's interesting, though, that you see the finale as an affirmation of “a spiritual, religious view of everlasting life,” whereas I think the film is, in part, about the secular experience of death. Despite all the mystical trappings, the core of the film is much more grounded. The film suggests that the scientist and the inquisitor make the same mistake in their certainty that the time we have on Earth is not enough, that there must be something more. Transcendence and spirituality and mysticism are elements in this story, but ultimately they are dismissed in favor of earthly materiality. The conquistador's mythological adventure and the Zen spaceman's journey are avenues into understanding the central story, but that central story is resolutely material, concerned not so much with what comes after death as what we can and should do before death. Tommy is comforted, not so much because he believes he'll be reunited with Izzi in the afterlife, but because he comes to accept that the time they had together on Earth would have to be enough. In the film's final act, amidst all the fireworks and the mystical visions, the most powerful moment is Tommy's reimagined walk with Izzi, when he leaves his work to spend the day with her. It's not the afterlife that redeems Tommy; it's life itself.


We don't know what comes after death, whether it's nothingness, or reincarnation (a possibility explored through Jackman's multiple roles), or some form of afterlife (a possibility suggested by the film's multiple representations of going into the light). But whatever it is, it's something separate and new, and since we don't know, we should embrace life, should embrace earthly existence and the people we share that existence with. This is the message of The Fountain as I see it. It is an agnostic celebration of life and love. This is, it must be said, remarkably close to my own philosophy about life and death, so perhaps one reason that I find this film so emotionally engaging and so thrilling is because it makes such poetry and beauty of the idea that life on Earth is, quite possibly, all we have, and that we should seek fulfillment and transcendence within life rather than outside or beyond it.


 

JB: I think you're absolutely correct that this film confirms the need to “seek fulfillment and transcendence within life,” but don't ignore that Tommy is trying to do just that by investing every waking moment in his lab. Yes, he turns away from his wife in the process, hoping to find a miracle cure at the 11th hour, but he does so precisely because he thinks death is The End, that when Izzi is gone there will be nothing left. Izzi, meanwhile, who no doubt appreciated the beauty of the present, is the one who is fascinated by the concept of death “as an act of creation.” So, yes, Izzi finds herself no longer terrified by death (“I'm not afraid anymore”), and thus part of her motivation for leaving that last chapter of her book unwritten is to get Tommy to accept his own mortality and mortality in general. (The Tom chapter is set far in the future to acknowledge just how difficult it is for Tommy to let go of his desire to eradicate death.) But I think we're overlooking quite a bit if we fail to recognize Izzi's hope for, and belief in, some kind of afterlife.


First, of course, there are Izzi's words in the present: her stories of Mayan culture—her fascination with Xiabalba—and of the Mayan guide who believed that his dead father became the tree that was planted over his grave. Then there are Izzi's words in the past: her oft repeated claim that “together we will live forever”; if Tommy uttered those words, it would seem to confirm his obsessive delusion that death is a disease, but Izzi is the film's sage. Then there's the film's religious imagery, from the biblical tree of life to the oft repeated shot of the gold altarpiece, before which Thomas the conquistador kneels—a glassy, circular bubble set within a sunburst of gold with a Christian cross on top, which foreshadows the image of Tom's futuristic spaceship exploding within the nebula and his eventual vertical ascent toward the heavens. Then there's Thomas' transformation into the hovering Tom, just before he's struck down by the flaming sword, which always reminds me of the terrific moment in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Indy puts his hand on his chest and makes a solemn “leap” of faith by willingly stepping out over the edge of a seemingly bottomless chasm; Tom, I believe, is likewise showing a belief in something beyond himself. And of course there are the frequent spoken and cinematic suggestions of death as “a road to awe”; The Fountain frequently shows Thomas and Tommy walking down corridors toward the light.


Now, in that final touching moment when Tommy steps into the light and has his awakening, he steps into his present, joining Izzi for a walk in the snow. So, again, I agree, this affirms our need to “embrace our earthly existence.” But let's not forget that Tom's breakthrough about his own mortality comes only after Izzi's death—both in the Tommy chapter, with Izzi as flesh and blood, and in the Tom chapter, with Izzi represented by the dying tree. Like you, my personal philosophy about death is that we just don't know what happens, and I'm grateful that The Fountain never specifically says what the afterlife is, or even if there is one. But to me the reason Tommy's transformation is so triumphant, and the reason Izzi, in the quasi-afterlife, smiles back at him with pride, isn't because he accepts that he will die but because he accepts that his death may not be The End. So when I suggest that The Fountain has a spiritual, religious view of everlasting life, I don't mean to imply that it's specifically Christian, for example, just that it isn't purely scientific. This is a film about appreciating life in the moment, but just as much, in my opinion, it's a film about faith, about believing that death isn't The End—or at least allowing for that possibility.



 

EH: That's well said, and perhaps I overstated the film's secular aspects at the expense of its spiritual ones. What's interesting about the film is how thoroughly it intertwines its evocations of a possible afterlife with its celebration of present-tense life on Earth. It is steadfastly opposed to the inquisitor's form of religion, which concerns the mortification of the flesh and the rejection of earthly life; the film suggests that, whatever spiritual transcendence might be awaiting us after death, we should never live only for that moment. It's about living for what's on Earth rather than for the hope of what lies beyond. So while the film undoubtedly deals with Christian iconography and the hope for an afterlife, it essentially places the afterlife on equal footing with mortal existence. Even the image of the tree as a symbol for transcendence suggests that the afterlife might exist within the natural world: the Mayan guide believes that his father lives on as a part of the world, his body transmuted into a tree, its leaves and its fruit, so that his memory can be spread throughout the world, carried on the wind or in the stomach of a bird. Thus when Tommy plants a tree over Izzi's grave, it's a symbolic gesture acknowledging that her memory will live on within the world, even if her physical presence is gone—regardless of what other afterlife she may or may not have moved on to.


Still, there's no denying that the film's climax is deeply mystical, in a way that preserves the mystery of the afterlife while obviously propelling its characters towards their various encounters with what comes next. The conquistador eats of the tree of life and is transformed into flora bursting from the soil (like the guide's father who becomes a tree, and maybe like Izzi herself once her own tree grows over and into her bones). The space traveler enters the heart of the dying star (earlier described as the Mayan underworld) and rushes joyfully into the light. Moreover, Aronofsky's aesthetic sensibility here seems to be aligned thoroughly with the magical and the spiritual. The soaring music of Aronofsky's musical collaborator Clint Mansell (who has scored all of Aronofsky's films) is achingly spiritual in its tidal pulsing, which comes to a momentary pause in sync with the imagery's temporary reduction to a single point of white light in the middle of empty blackness, presaging the explosive resurgence where Tom/Tommy hurtles towards his final moment of understanding. I think Aronofsky is tapping into mythic and religious imagery as a way of suggesting the plenitude of humanity's imaginative attempts to grapple with the essentially unknowable nature of death.


The finale is a kaleidoscopic outpouring of brilliant imagery, as the spacefaring incarnation of Tommy climbs up the tree and propels himself into the vacuum, into a separate bubble that hovers above the tree—as elegant and profound a visualization of leaving one's obsessions behind as Aronofsky has crafted thus far. The film's visual effects were crafted largely not through CGI but by magnifying and filming chemical reactions occurring in petri dishes, so that the nebulae and star fields through which this space traveler floats are actually enlargements of the microscopic processes that occur within the human body and within all life. It's appropriate that this film about the wonder and pain of material existence should imply, in its own means of construction, that the cosmic and the miniscule are unified: one can go looking for answers in the bonding of molecules or in the furthest reaches of the heavens and find the same thing.


And throughout it all, Tommy himself remains earthbound and grounded, imagining, reading and/or writing about Mayan legends and transcendence in deep space even as, on Earth in his transitory form, he comes to terms with his own human-scale struggle to accept his wife's too-young death, as well as his own eventual demise. No matter how strenuously Aronofsky's images hurl the film into the cosmos, towards the barrier between life and death, there's always that anchor of earthliness: a half-playful, half-sad snowball fight; the stark white vista surrounding the plain brown rectangle of Izzi's gravesite at her funeral; the several-times-repeated flash of a younger, healthier Izzi, in a bright red dress, playing a game of tag with her husband; Tommy whispering to the back of his wife's neck, the hairs on her neck standing up at the brush of his breath, evoking the textured surface of the tree of life that the space traveler tries to nurture towards Xiabalba.


The most affecting and potent of these earthbound images, though, is also the most heartbreaking. It's an image that, for me, redeems the wallowing-in-misery sensibility that I detect in Requiem for a Dream. Tommy, in the moments immediately after Izzi's death, assaults the hospital workers and then, desperately, tries to breathe life back into his wife, slobbering and weeping into her open mouth. It's a bleak, horrible image—and one of the rare moments in all of cinema that literally brings tears to my eyes every time I see it—but whereas I felt like the misery in Requiem for a Dream was often false and contrived, this moment rings true as the unthinking reaction of a man who has just lost all of the hopes to which he had been so stubbornly clinging for so long. It's one of those moments that ground the film's more fanciful excursions in concrete reality, that provide an emotional center for the film's exploration of love and loss and the hope for eternity. You described the film perfectly before, in a single word: “layered.” And at moments like this, all the layers fold together into a forceful, densely packed burst of emotional catharsis, before once again splitting, mitosis-like, into multiple planes of reality and existence.



 

JB: If we weren't before, we're on the same page now. Interestingly, though, the moment that brings me to tears each time I see The Fountain is a triumphant one: the moment when Thomas passes through the passageway of the temple and finds, sure enough, awe. “Behold!” he says, tears welling in his eyes, in what is easily one of my favorite moments in all of cinema. Talk about the power of one little word! It's a moment that's both specific and universal, revealing the overwhelming relief of a man who has spent so much of his life searching, a man who only in the moment that he finds what he's looking for allows his previous doubt to flash across his face, while also revealing what it means to arrive at the end of a long journey. It's a moment that at once affirms Tommy's quest for bodily eternal life while suggesting with its biblical tree that such eternity is found only through faith (which, indeed, is how Thomas got past the flaming sword in the first place). As you already pointed out, the tree doesn't give Thomas the kind of eternal life he was looking for. In essence, it kills him to create new life, which only supports your reading about the importance of embracing our earthly life. Still, Thomas' “Behold!” moment is profoundly beautiful and beautifully profound. Back when we discussed Requiem for a Dream I told you that one of the reasons I'm conflicted about that movie is because, relatively speaking, I don't think it's all that challenging to evoke the emotions that dominate that film: despair, horror and revulsion. This is different. When Thomas says “Behold!” we don't just see his awe, we feel it, as Aronofsky matches the narrative's emotional crescendo with that truly magical image of the tree of life. (If 2011's Tree of Life has a tree of life in it, I have doubts that even Terrence Malick can rival the magnificence of that image.) It's not uncommon for films themselves to fill us with a sense of awe—that's why we love movies—but it is rare that we feel awe in unison with an onscreen character.


And while we're on the subject of favorites, I must double back to discuss Mansell's score, which is absolutely my favorite of this young century. Like The Fountain itself, it effortlessly sways between themes of sadness, hopelessness and loss to emotions of passion, elation and triumph without ever losing its cohesiveness; it feels just as appropriate in the conquistador chapter as in the futuristic one. It blends the strings of the Kronos Quartet with some almost tribal drumbeats and mystical choral echoes—always dripping with consequence, lingering around the characters to convey heartache, urgency and romance, sometimes all at once. But more than anything, Mansell's score is propulsive, moving us forward, forward, forward toward that fateful moment of consequence at which point, as you said, the score goes silent, leaving us floating uncertainly, as if thrust upward by a wave that just as quickly disappeared beneath us. And before we can fall, the score resumes again, in a bigger wave that propels us to The Fountain's peak of emotional wonderment. It is, in a word, awesome. And as far as I'm concerned it might be the film's most significant achievement.



 

EH: If it's not the film's most significant achievement, it's certainly one of them. Mansell's score, as played by the sympathetic musicians of the Kronos Quartet and Scottish post-rock band Mogwai, is perfectly attuned to the emotions of Aronofsky's film. It's a score of big gestures that churns with slowly building emotion throughout the film, building up to the epic catharsis of the ending, matching note for note the mounting intensity in Aronofsky's images. Mansell's scores for all of Aronofsky's films have been effective, particularly the techno-industrial paranoia of his Pi score, but for The Fountain, just as Aronofsky launched himself to the next level in his filmmaking as though he was leaping towards an exploding nebula, Mansell joined his friend and collaborator by crafting the best music of his career.


That's fitting, because The Fountain is certainly the best film of Aronofsky's career as well (though I eagerly await the soon-to-be-released Black Swan). Interestingly, Aronofsky made this masterpiece not by retreating from some of the excesses that marred his first two films, but by diving headfirst into them. The film is every bit as emotionally raw and melodramatic as its successors. It's stylistically hyper and heightens its emotional stakes through frenzied cutting and bursts of gaudy imagery—though Aronofsky also seems to have learned the value of slowing down for quieter moments. Even its symbolism is in some ways as obvious and broad as in the earlier films, though the complexity of the ideas Aronofsky is exploring here, as compared to the comparatively simple psychological states evoked by Pi and Requiem for a Dream, makes a big difference.


One of my favorite of the film's symbolic constructs—and there are many, considering how thoroughly the film is constructed around parallels between its three levels of story—is the equivalence between Izzi and the tree of life itself. The connection is made explicit by the parallel shots of the bald spacefarer whispering to the tree, the bark of which is dotted with very human-like hairs, and the shots of Tommy kissing Izzi's neck and reassuring her. In this way, Aronofsky connects Tommy's obsession with saving Izzi to the spaceman's obsession with saving the tree. If only he can find the cure, if only he can reach Xiabalba. Following this parallel further, the way the spaceman eats from the tree during his voyage suggests the degree to which our obsessions can provide sustenance as they become the sole reason and focus of our existence. Tommy's obsession begins as a desire to keep Izzi alive, to cure her, but over time the obsession becomes its own justification: he increasingly pushes Izzi aside and pours himself into the work that he's doing for her, and then even after she dies he can't let go of the obsession. It sustains him, becomes his reason to live, the center of his existence, occupying the space once occupied by Izzi herself. The futuristic segment literalizes the degree to which obsession replaces love by making the tree a physical replacement for the absent Izzi. And in the end, the spaceman must leave the tree behind to reach nirvana, just as Tommy must let go of his quest against death to achieve some measure of contentment; only the conquistador doesn't abandon his obsession, and as a result meets a fate nearly as grisly as the addicts' misery at the end of Requiem for a Dream.




 
JB: Good observations. Somehow I hadn't really considered that last part, perhaps because Thomas' death is the perfect climax to the film's fascination with death as a pathway to rebirth, which of course brings us to another of the film's symbolic constructs: the use of circles as visual representations of an eternal life cycle—the circle of life, if you will. Circles are everywhere in The Fountain, most obviously in the form of Thomas and Tommy's ring and Tom's spherical space pod, but also in that glassy center of the altarpiece (which, by the way, appears to include strands of the queen's hair); in the image on Tommy's computer screen when he talks with Izzi at the lab; in the pattern of the floor at the queen's palace chamber and at the hospital where Izzi dies; in the light at the center of the map where “O,” not “X,” marks the location of the hidden temple; in the beam of light on the museum floor, where Izzi stands and looks heavenward before collapsing; in that tunnel of stars through which Tom's space pod ascends toward the nebula, and then beyond; in the tattooed bands on Tom's ring finger and arm; in the multiple extreme closesups of characters' eyes; and, heck, even in the brain scans of the monkey that Tommy puts up on the light board. “Circles, he leads us in circles,” grumbles one of Thomas' fellow conquistadors at their camp in the jungle. He's referring to the priest. He might as well be talking about Aronofsky.


Like you, I think that The Fountain is Aronofsky's best film to date (and, like you, I'm excited about Black Swan, in part because I've always felt that Natalie Portman dependably turns in performances that match the richness of her material). The Fountain's only weakness, in my opinion, is its occasional tendency to slip beyond emotional rawness into full-on melodrama and clichÈ, most glaringly in the scene in which Burstyn's Lillian delivers the tried and true “You're Reckless” lecture, which blessedly stops just short of a demand for Tommy to put his stethoscope on the table and leave her office. And having said that, I suppose that this is as good a time as any to turn our attention to what I believe to be Aronofsky's second best film, The Wrestler...

[carouselkathy]

Too tired to read the whole thing, but what I have read seems very insightful.