Fountain Head Trip

The Fountain

(PG-13)

originally published November 29, 2006

Hugh Jackman

Darren Aronofsky has been called many names in his short career, some of them not so nice. The auteur of Pi and Requiem for a Dream has most often been saddled with the oversized baggage that comes with being “the new Kubrick.” If Darren is the new Stanley, then The Fountain is his 2001. Visually spectacular and esoterically incomprehensible, The Fountain spans thousands of years in the love life of two soulmates. In the Spain of the Inquisition, a conquistador called Tomas (Hugh Jackman) is tasked with finding the biblical Tree of Life by his royal love, Isabel (Rachel Weisz, Aronofsky’s real-life partner). In the present day, research scientist Tommy Creo (Jackman again) works night and day to find a cure for the brain tumor killing his love Izzi (Weisz twice). In 2500, a bald Tom (the third Jackman’s the charm) soars through the universe in a translucent orb, transporting a dying tree across the universe to the Xibelba nebula. Unlike another of the fall’s dense multi-narratives, the disconnected Babel, Aronofsky interweaves the diaphanous threads of his three interconnected stories with precision. His transitions are gloriously concealed and revealed. Though the film’s heart beats strongest in Tommy and Izzi, essential, if nearly coagulated, blood is pumped from its extremities, Tomas and Tom. As the central Tree of Life would die were its roots cut, so would The Fountain were it to lose any of its three Toms.

Perhaps Aronofsky’s film just hit me at the right time in the right spot, but I haven’t seen a more emotionally rousing film this year. (Take that, Kubrick and your freezing-cold Space Odyssey.) How easy it is to generalize Thomas’ journey. We may not live thousands of years, but we all must come to terms with life, death and possible rebirth (depending on your religious persuasion). The Fountain comes less than a week after a particularly painful personal loss for me, and, like the year’s other great film, United 93, contributes to a sense of closure. For a film to enclose such curative power in its running time is extremely rare. Aronofsky’s disturbing Requiem for a Dream held a similar power. To have made two potent, challenging films, Aronofsky possesses a talent of equal scarcity with his films. He can never be satisfied by the simple act of filmmaking. For Aronofsky, cinema is an art. In fact, it is the modern world’s most vociferous form of art. It is also a collaborative art, and Aronofsky could not have selected a finer cast and crew. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique, who worked on both Pi and Requiem, ravishes the eye. A film of extremes, the photography is no different. Light and dark work in competitive cooperation. The army of special effects artists who masterminded the out-of-this-world universe across which Tom streaks deserve every accolade available. Those sequences are utterly, beautifully alien to the eye. Sonically, Clint Mansell evocatively scores this gravely heartrending film.

An extremely likable actor, Jackman has been able to extend the boundaries of his talent with each role he’s taken. The Fountain provides him with a triumvirate, and he grows into them all as the film progresses. He plays each well, but finds his strongest footing as Tommy, the most difficult of the three. Traveling not through the jungles of the New World or the colorful expanses of deep space, Tommy must traverse the stages of grief. He may keep himself busy with his personal race for a cure, but Tommy grasps the futility of his actions. The Fountain is often little more than a special effects-laden, one-man play, and Jackman shines as conquistador, scientist and astronaut. The Boy from Oz makes it easy to forget Brad Pitt was originally hired to star in the much more expansive Fountain Aronofsky first envisioned. When not acting alone, Jackman is joined by Oscar winner Weisz, whose beatific, cancer-stricken Izzi never falters, even at the end. Jackman and Weisz wonderfully, tearfully capture the push-and-pull of a couple’s last days together. After seeing original couple Pitt and Cate Blanchett act so cold and distant in Babel, I begin to wonder if Aronofsky didn’t luck out when the first version of The Fountain fell through.

Being likened to a master also means being judged like one, and Aronofsky’s film is not without faults. A flawed masterpiece (like some of Kubrick’s own films), it feels incomplete, like a first draft. I wonder what could have been had Aronofsky’s original vision been completed. Would the Pitt-Blanchett Fountain have been the grand, heartfelt science fiction epic of all time? Or would it have bankrupted a studio like that cinematic wunderkind, Michael Cimino, and his Heaven’s Gate? Even shrunk to an hour and a half, lethargy sets in during Tommy and Izzi’s struggle, and confusion mars the beginning and the end. If “death is the road to awe,” as the film suggests, consider me confusedly awed. Yet whether I get it all (or any of finale, for that matter), I adored The Fountain for its earnest attempt to aid the audience in confronting the fragility of life. Wearing its heart proudly on its intelligent designer sleeve, The Fountain deserves entombment in that same heady sci fi mausoleum that houses 2001 and Solaris.