'The Fountain' review

Darren Aronofsky's grandiose vision is ambitious, but overly wrought with pretension

By Megan Milks
Published: December 4th, 2006 | 12:15pm

The Fountain is Darren Aronofsky's overambitious paean to eternal life and love and the favorite for Best Flawed Masterpiece of 2006. Featuring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz as characters in three overlapping narratives, the film moves from the 15th Century (Jackman as Tomas, Spanish conquistador, and Weisz as Queen Isabel) to the present-day (Jackman as Tommy, cancer researcher, Weisz as Izzi, his terminally ill wife) to the unspecified future (Jackman as bald yogi, Weisz as tree, both floating in interstellar space within an orb that is later revealed to be Shibalba, the key to the Mayan underworld... or something). Connected through a manuscript that Izzi has asked Tommy to finish writing, the narratives interlock in ways that at times illuminate, at times further baffle the story as a whole.

It's an ambitious film - and because films of ambition are so rare in these days of gratuitous rehashing, it's all the more regrettable that The Fountain is so easily made fun of. The film's central thesis is that death is in essence new life; paradoxically, only through death is life eternal. That's weighty material, and Aronofsky treats it with a sincerity that borders on maniacal. The film simply takes itself too seriously, reaching out in earnest to grip the shoulders of the viewer and shake them vigorously while exhorting said viewer to, "Feel! Feel, dammit, and live!"

Perhaps the film's take-me-seriously syndrome is just a side effect of the larger problem of mixing unabashed realism with some pretty far-out science fiction - an admirable idea, to be sure. But sci-fi traditionally works because of the giddily self-conscious delight it takes in its prophecies. Here, the sci-fi shakes with vehemence and pretension, and the moves between the futuristic orb and reality as we know it are an unpleasant, and hard to sustain, jolt: When, for instance, present-day Tommy is inspired to use a Guatemalan tree sample in surgery after seeing a vision of Shibalba from a suspiciously convenient skylight in his lab, the disbelief is impossible to suspend.

If Aronofsky had incorporated a sense of irony, however slight, into the film, he might have pulled off the Rachel Weisz as a dying star-tree in the Mayan cosmic underworld riff. And Jackman might have pulled off DOA lines like (to dying star-tree) "everything's all right (pat, pat)." For such an abundantly quirky film, The Fountain seems too intent on being a Very Serious Work of Art to take advantage of its quirks in the way that, say, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, another film bent on mixing sci-fi, realism, and the eternity of star-crossed love, does.

Together, The Fountain's laughable moments span only a fraction of the film in full, which is formidable in both visual and narrative achievement. The look of the film is stunning: The orb scenes, done without CGI, herald an entirely new approach to sci-fi cinematography. In addition, Aronofsky has come close to forging a new kind of nonlinear narrative. He folds his three narratives into and around each other as though composing a song, using elements like choral repetition and rhyme. He does this visually, with repeated images and triggers that link the stories, as well as with sound, using lines that repeat and often link the characters to one another between time periods.

When the film turns, the payoff is considerable, though not enough to compensate for the pretension and flaws in the narrative. Aronofsky again proves his penchant for technical virtuosity and innovation; if only he could just get the story right.