The Fountain (2006)
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Written by Darren Aronofsky
Starring Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz
Release Date November 22nd, 2006
Published November 22nd 2006
With its gorgeous sci-fi visuals and promise of a grand love story, I expected The Fountain to be an epic of film technology and a grand love story. Maybe I was expecting too much. The visuals are there, lushly beautiful sci-fi vistas, mind blowing uses of color and light and technology. However, the love story is simply tedious.
A mopey, dopey Hugh Jackman wanders through this eye popping sci-fi set piece weeping and falling over and just generally ruining what might otherwise be the closest anyone has come to evoking the genius of Kubrick's 2001, or at the very least the minor pleasure of Roger Corman's The Trip.
Izzie Creo (Rachel Weisz) is dying. She has an inoperable brain tumor but that has not stopped her research scientist husband Tommy (Hugh Jackman) from spending every waking moment trying to find a cure. So driven by his quest that he has begun neglecting what little time he and Izzy have left, a point well made by his boss Dr. Guzzetti (Ellen Burstyn), who visits Izzy while Tommy continues working.
Tommy and Izzy have a connection that seems to have lasted through time. In a story written by Izzie, the two are cast as Spanish conquistador and Queen in the search for the fountain of youth. And in a future that we see but Tommy and Izzie are seemingly unaware of, another version of Tommy has for thousands of years traveled the universe with what we can only assume is Izzy's body buried within the bark of an ancient tree. His quest is for a dying star that may be able to restore Izzy's life and allow them both to live for eternity together.
It's a grand idea but in execution The Fountain is a somewhat sappy take on eternal love with a performance by Hugh Jackman that leaves one to wonder whether this really was the guy who played the tough guy Wolverine in the X-Men movies. Clearly this teary eyed , mumblemouth can't be the same man who brought life to one of the comics' manliest superheroes.
Jackman's performance notwithstanding, there are a number of stunningly beautiful images in The Fountain that make me wish I liked this movie more than I did. Darren Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique craft some awesomely psychedelic visions that will dazzle your eyes even as your brain rebels against the lame love story.
I could watch Rachel Weisz make a sandwich, she is that interesting as an actress. Her Oscar winning role in The Constant Gardener was tiny compared to star Ralph Fiennes and yet she steals the entire picture with her wounded toughness and vulnerability. Even her roles in mainstream fluff like The Mummy, Constantine or Runaway Jury are given weight by her appearance.
In The Fountain, Rachel Weisz plays second to Hugh Jackman and is too often left on the sidelines. Though I find it easy to imagine a man wanting to follow Rachel Weisz through lifetimes, and attempt to conquer death on her behalf, her character here is too thin to provide the dramatic motivation needed to justify all of Hugh Jackman's weepy determination.
Much has been made of The Fountain and its appeal to the stoner crowd and though I have never used psychedelic drugs I would like to imagine the experience to be something akin to watching The Fountain. Not an entirely satisfying experience but one of mind melting visual excesses that might inspire great art and great thought. The film is so wonderfully visual that it may have been a masterpiece had there been as much care given to the story as to the trippy visuals.
I was reminded throughout The Fountain of the Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come another visually stunning film that dies on the vine of melodrama. Both films are about men who attempt to conquer death by crying uncontrollably and both films are gorgeous boundary pushing exercises in visual virtuosity. If you were a fan of What Dreams May Come you may find similar pleasure in The Fountain.
Darren Aronofsky is a visionary with an uncompromising will to tell this story. Unfortunately he seems to have become dazed by his own visuals and lost in the morass of the lovely sci-fi landscapes of The Fountain. He gets little help from star Hugh Jackman who delivers a weak kneed, weepy performance, more suited to a daytime soap opera actor than to the man who was Wolverine.
The Fountain is a lovely example of the visual aspects of filmmaking. As a story however, it's a teary and bleary chick flick dressed in sci-fi clothes.
