dir: Darren Aronofsky
[img_assist|nid=91|title=Death is the path to Oww!|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=499|height=309]
It’s easy for me to respect directors and filmmakers who don’t want to just make the same crap as 99 per cent of the guys and gals around them. I can respect them even when their films don’t work.
In Aronofsky’s case, his films definitely work: but they’re not easy films to like. Pi was a low-budget headfuck likely to have repulsed as many people as it attracted with its strange mathematical wizardry story of sexual frustration gone awry. His next film, a notorious adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr’s Requiem for a Dream, made addiction, in all its forms, look like the worst living hell we can imagine. Not a single character gets out of that flick unscathed. Nor audience member.
Depressing, so depressing. I remember coming out of the theatre shaking, which continued for hours afterwards and even after several drinks. I felt like the only thing that could make things better was a little bit of heroin…
At the very least, Aronofsky and his production crew (and especially his cinematographer Matthew Libatique) announced themselves as major talents unwilling or unable to make crass product for its own sake, and that they were people who wanted to and could make original, distinctive films.
And they’ve made a distinctive and difficult film yet again with The Fountain. It’s just that I’m not sure if it’s a film that I really got that much out of. It’s not a bad film, I don’t think, if you’ll permit me the double negative and I’m sure you will because you have no choice, but I don’t know if I liked it that much.
In what appears to be three time periods, a man played by Hugh Jackman, that lovely Boy from Oz, tries to complete some tasks or another. In the 1500s, he is a conquistador trying to save Spain and her Queen from the dreaded Spanish Inquisition, which no-one expects, apparently. He travels deep into the jungles of the New World to discover the Tree of Life, said to possess the qualities of immortality.
In a more contemporary timeline, he is a scientist desperately trying to find a way to cure his beloved wife Izzi (Rachel Weisz), who is dying because of a brain tumour. He and his crew experiment with samples from a tree found deep in the jungles of Guatemala, which they inject into a monkey, to wondrous effect. He is so focussed on saving his wife that he ends up neglecting her. Failure is not an option for him, because he cannot accept that he might not be able to save her.
In a third, more futuristic setting, Jackman’s character travels through space towards a nebula within a huge bubble that contains himself and a giant tree. The nebula, called Xibalba, plays a major role in all three storylines, but what it really represents isn't clear until the end.
The three timelines interweave and are shown to be inextricably linked. Events are replayed with different outcomes, and we get the impression that the three characters played by Jackman are, at least symbolically, the same person.
Any story about the search for immortality invariably ends up being a story about the acceptance of death as a natural part of life, and The Fountain is no different. That shouldn’t imply there is anything predictable or mundane about any aspect of this troubled production.
The film can be a bit confusing, and there is a central coldness to part of the narrative, in that I especially never got that Tom/Tomas/Bald Guy loved Izzi (or her various incarnations) so much that it drove him to the point of all-consuming madness. Looking edgy and barking at your partner doesn’t define for me the ultimate in love stories. In a broader sense, I can accept that his terror in the face of death, hers or his own, is an even bigger motivator, but combining it with the romantic aspect didn’t work for me.
There’s no denying the power of such a story. The human desire for immortality is as old as death itself. One of the oldest stories humanity possesses, in the form of the Epic of Gilgamesh, explicitly makes reference to searching for the cure to all life’s ills (being death) in the form of a pearl granting immortality. Considering how old it is, people have clearly been hoping for a way to cheat Death for a very long time.
Most of us don’t want to die, but, hey, it’s not like we get a choice in the matter. Our deaths are as unavoidable, in the end, as any other aspect of the human condition, yet that doesn’t make it any easier for those of us still breathing to contemplate.
On top of the fear of our own deaths, which is probably next to a fear of public speaking or not being able to get it up the deepest fear we possess, the fear of losing those we love can overwhelm us. They say that sex is the prime motivator in what humans do, but it is the fear of death that creates religions, giant buildings like skyscrapers and pyramids, and a health industry squandering billions of dollars keeping people alive well past their use-by date. But loss, and the fear of loss, can be even more fundamental.
Thomas refuses to accept what Izzi herself seems to have made her peace with: that all living things must die, and that through death, in some ways, we are reborn. She wants to give Thomas a way to understand and accept what she’s going through, and to that end she has written a book, conveniently called The Fountain, which chronicles the adventures of a Spanish conquistador searching for the Tree of Life.
The Tree of Life originates in the Genesis myth as detailed in the Bible, where the Garden of Eden possesses two trees Adam and Eve no longer have access to after pissing off God: the Tree of Knowledge, from which they had been forbidden to eat, and the Tree of Life, giver of immortality. Cut off and cast out, they are mortal, meaning they can die, and stupid, like the rest of us.
The Tree of Knowledge doesn’t get a guernsey in The Fountain, but the Tree of Life sure as hell does. In the conquistador story, all these complex elements link in to get the guy where he needs to be in front of the tree. In the contemporary storyline, samples from a tree we’re meant to assume is the same Tree seem to possess the qualities of giving the consumer immortality or at least rejuvenation. In the future storyline, it is the Tree itself hurtling through space which may, in fact be dying.
There are several ways to interpret the film, but I’m not sure it would do the reader’s justice to have the plot spelled out to them. It is a bit complex and confusing, but I think the key is to realise that what happens in the early storyline and the future storyline don’t necessarily have to be taken literally. This is, after all, a story meant to convince Thomas that, like the Nick Cave song from the Murder Ballads album, Death is Not the End. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true: in that it’s saying it is the end, there needs to be an end, but we need not fear it, and by embracing it we live anew.
The production values of the flick are superlative, which is surprising considering the way in which they try to use as little CGI as possible for many of the trippy visuals, by relying on old-school special effects. I especially need to single out the superb Clint Mansell soundtrack, which is nothing like his earlier electronica soundtracks, but really, in some ways, is better than the film itself.
As for the acting, well, to be honest, I don’t think the acting really matters that much. There’s probably not a single line of dialogue or acting scene that sticks out with me as much as any of the concepts brought up or elucidated upon. It’s an ideas, not an acting, film.
When people think about these metaphysical science fiction films, like the two versions of Solaris, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Battlefield: Earth, it’s not the acting that makes the flicks so memorable. Except maybe for that last one, oh baby.
I don’t know if Jackman really nailed the part, or if it mattered. The story is so complex (on first sight), that most of the time he just has to show up and be in frame. But I guess he does well with the part. In the early and future timelines he gets to do some actiony – out there kind of stuff. A particularly good bit, which sounds naff, has him doing tai chi in the darkness with a star-filled sky as his background. As the conquistador he gave me too many flashbacks to Van Helsing for me to speak too much more about it: I will say that the conclusion of that part of the story is nothing short of absolute brilliance. Even though I should have expected it, I definitely didn’t, and was absolutely blown away by what happened. It blew my mind and made me reconsider how I felt about the film. Not enough to like it, though.
But overall I’m not sure how much people will get out of this experience. A few people I’ve spoken to about it have said that the film blew their mind and was one of the most amazing cinema experiences they’ve had in years. Others have shrugged their shoulders and said something like “Another beer?” I don’t think it’s bad, but it definitely didn’t blow anything of mine.
It’s not a long film, clocking in just over 90 minutes, but it feels like there’s something missing. The film’s production was quite troubled, to say the least, with Aronofsky having initially been given a huge budget by Warner Brothers who forced him to make the film up on the Gold Coast, which he described as a “wasteland”. The budget and support were contingent on Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt's participation. When that shmuck walked away in order to make Troy, everything fell apart. The studio then killed the film after years of pre-production by Aronofsky’s crew, forcing him to rewrite and recast the whole flick, and to make it with less than half the budget he’d previously envisaged. He’s done remarkably well to ensure that at least some of his vision and intentions have come through, unlike someone like Terry Gilliam who seems to have most of his productions fall over all the time.
Let's face it: it's a way better film without Pitt or Blanchett in it. But I wonder what else it could have been.
6 ways in which I refuse to learn from the film’s message and will fight tooth, nail and claw to prevent those I love from dying out of 10. Even if I have to go to Guatemala.
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“Our bodies are prisons for our souls; all flesh decays, death turns all to ash and thus, death frees every soul.” – The Fountain.
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