MOVIE REVIEW: The Fountain

Late in Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain the entire scope of the film accomplishes some amazing things: it successfully maps together the 3 overlaying stories of the film – a conquistador’s quest for the Tree of Life at the request of Queen Isabel; a doctor’s quest to save his wife from brain cancer in the contemporary United States; and a lone space traveler’s quest to reach a faraway star – while at the same time transcending – and confusing - any concept of a linear connection between those three arcs. (I would go into more depth about my theories of the linear connection, but that would betray Colbinski Chronicles’ unwritten “no spoiler” policy that all reviews strictly adhere to.)

This scene, and the subsequent scenes intermixing back and forth from the past and modern day and futuristic stories, introduces many more questions than it answers, but at the same time brings coherence to all the storylines. It is precisely because of this coherence that the underlying mystery – that of love and death and hope and loss- resonates so acutely. In the end, there’s clarity in what hasn’t been told. There’s no moment that safely packs all the themes into a neat box, but if there had been, I’m sure I would have felt slighted. I’m glad to leave the theater with head-scratching questions about what it all means than to be treated to treacle full of hoary clichés.

And it is in this that the beauty of The Fountain is found. (Well, that’s not true, the real beauty is found in the palette of Aronofsky’s direction and film photography. The Fountain is visually stunning – from Rachel Weisz’s illuminating Queen Isabel shrouded in white by candles to Hugh Jackman’s bald and Zen-like spaceman floating through a kaleidoscope of vibrant oranges and yellows traveling in a bubble accompanied by a tree lush with green life. Not to mention the hauntingly exquisite score by Clint Mansell and Mogwai. But I digress.)

The way The Fountain eschews many norms of storytelling is telling. Essentially, the movie is about a man who will do anything to save his wife from dying. Add to it a pseudo time-travel angle, and a Conquistador in Central America plot, and one may get the idea that the film is either science fiction claptrap or inane action flick or indulgent melodrama. The Fountain avoids the trappings of all those limitations by not involving them in the framework. That is, the possible time-travel, if that’s really what’s going on, is never explained (I have a theory on this too - but that brings us back to the “no spoiler” policy) and this in-effect cancels out any melodrama. By not knowing the linear connection from the past to the present to the future, but by giving such full attention and detail to the specific capsule of time we spend with the Conquistador, the doctor and his wife, and the man in the bubble, Aronofsky delivers a thought provoking and triumphant film that tells its story in a real and true way that is only aided by a quest for the Tree of Life or space travel.

Something I noticed about Aronofsky’s films – this includes Pi and Requiem for a Dream, as well as for The Fountain – is the absence of humor. That’s not to say that his movies are humorless because they are not. Instead, he doesn’t use laugh lines as a crutch. His characters are real – they cope, they smile, they anguish, they love, they live, they die. There’s a truth to The Fountain that overrides the snobbish dismissals I’ve read. Sure I haven’t wrapped my head around all that transpires in the movie, but I know damn well that what is up on the screen is true.