The Fountain

Casual movie goers in pursuit of minor entertainment should be forewarned that The Fountain is by no means a conventional movie going experience. Despite having recognizable stars and a sizable budget, this is truly an art film that is only likely to please a very narrow audience of thinkers and cinephiles. What Requiem for a Dream auteur Darren Aronofsky has crafted here is an indulgent, passionate, and fairly abstract meditation on life, love, and man’s eternal quest for immortality. It’s much more of a visual tone poem than it is a cohesive narrative.

I’ll admit that its artful, lavish style can feel tedious at first, but once you get sucked into its careful rhythms and quiet melancholy it really takes hold and becomes an absolutely riveting film of unguarded beauty and emotion. Aronofsky is clearly shedding any sense of self editing here and ridding himself of any kind of calculated measure. This is just lush and sumptuous visuals layered over utterly melodramatic scenes about romance and love. It’s to be absolutely avoided if you feel no desire to experience an inexplicable, but thought provoking and wholly affective film (think the first time you saw Donnie Darko and had no idea what happened but loved it anyway). However, if you really want to see something moving, audacious, and evocative, I cannot think of a better movie in theaters now for you to see.

Hugh Jackman has never been more soulful than he is here as the brokenhearted Tommy, husband to a withering wife stricken with illness, Izzi (Rachel Weisz). Weisz is an absolutely stunning actress with both a sense of loveliness and tragedy about her. She makes Izzi’s suffering all the more graceful and painful to witness. It’s really the humanity of their performances that harnesses the visual and lyrical madness of this shapeless film. The honesty of the characters makes you believe (or want to believe) this story despite whatever inherent silliness comes with some of its odder moments.

The details of what these moments are and what the actual plot of the film is really fail to matter as this is not something meant to be instantly understood. It’s a movie that’s meant to be felt more than comprehended and it works on such an emotionally visceral level that I really didn’t care to question the logic of its dreamy century hopping love story. Besides the central, present day story, we also see Weisz and Jackman playing characters in 16th century Spain and floating through space sometime in the future. These threads stem from a book written by the dying Izzi that is meant to be finished by Tommy and given the proper ending (i.e. posing the question, “How does our story end?”). Her book reflects their lives and frames their tale with elaborate, almost literary imagery and metaphor. Stories and characters all blend and bleed together. Nothing here is clear, but every second of it is absolutely wonderful.

Grade: A+