SpenniesThe Fountain
February 7th 2007 03:57
It’s gotten a pretty bad rap so far, but Darren Aronofsky’s latest film The Fountain is not as flimsy as it seems.
[link]
The Fountain is altogether an interesting film. Not entirely well made, and the acting could have been a bit better, but this is one of those films where the concept behind it matters more than the film itself and all its cinematic blemishes. In this film Aronofsky has tackled the age-old question (forgive me) of immortality – what would it be like to live forever?
Although Aronofsky doesn’t deal with the subject very delicately, it’s clear that anything more delicate would have skewed his original intentions, and, whereas I can only guess what these are, I think these are what should be taken into account when calculating the movie’s worth.
There are three parts to the film: the past, the present and the future. The action fluctuates between the three in a non-linear way, but it’s not confusing at all: the main character from each part (all played by Hugh Jackman) is struggling to save the thing he loves: Spain and its queen, a wife dying of a brain tumour, and the tree of life itself.
And similarly, in each part, what the main character simply fails to realise that you can’t cheat death. You could be shrugging your shoulders going ‘Yeah so, I knew that before’ but if how often do you actually think about life in this way? How often do you actually ponder the possibility of immortality?
Tying all three parts together is a Mayan legend about the tree of life, which suggests that death is only the beginning, not something to be feared or dreaded. Whether this is actually true, or whether it’s simply a comforting thought doesn’t matter: death has always been, and will forever remain, a mystery that we should not stop trying to solve.
For that, Aronofsky gets five stars.
[link]
The Fountain is altogether an interesting film. Not entirely well made, and the acting could have been a bit better, but this is one of those films where the concept behind it matters more than the film itself and all its cinematic blemishes. In this film Aronofsky has tackled the age-old question (forgive me) of immortality – what would it be like to live forever?
Although Aronofsky doesn’t deal with the subject very delicately, it’s clear that anything more delicate would have skewed his original intentions, and, whereas I can only guess what these are, I think these are what should be taken into account when calculating the movie’s worth.
There are three parts to the film: the past, the present and the future. The action fluctuates between the three in a non-linear way, but it’s not confusing at all: the main character from each part (all played by Hugh Jackman) is struggling to save the thing he loves: Spain and its queen, a wife dying of a brain tumour, and the tree of life itself.
And similarly, in each part, what the main character simply fails to realise that you can’t cheat death. You could be shrugging your shoulders going ‘Yeah so, I knew that before’ but if how often do you actually think about life in this way? How often do you actually ponder the possibility of immortality?
Tying all three parts together is a Mayan legend about the tree of life, which suggests that death is only the beginning, not something to be feared or dreaded. Whether this is actually true, or whether it’s simply a comforting thought doesn’t matter: death has always been, and will forever remain, a mystery that we should not stop trying to solve.
Hugh Jackman in The Fountain
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