"The Fountain" (2006) - Movie Review

“The Fountain” starts mystically with an amnesiac effect and end with the same note in more glorious way to be left confused. But the film has more than confusion to offer. When I finished watching and the credits rolled, I was not answered or even remotely satisfied. I did not understand anything and yet something pinched me from the screen. It intrigued and motivated (as the lonely girl walks through a dark room in a horror movie) into go for the experience once again. Then I watched the final 20 minutes further two times and both the times, it enlightened in flagrant different angles, dimension, philosophy and one certain ending.

I can pity the audience who got to view it once in the theatre. Still as I got the instinct to look further, they would have been struck to rent the DVD and watch it again. The film has three time periods (or not) as a representation of the fight towards immortality. The reasoning for the details is not concentrated but the pathos and the yearning for a solution to the loss of a life is where detailing goes by. Darren Aronofsky and his crew worked on this project putting their life on it during 2002 but got shelved due to budget constraints and actor scheduling. With dejected heart but a hopeful mind Aronofsky worked on it again to bring down the budget and find Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz to ignite the project to live. The CGI is heavily used and the Mayan architectural bodies are monumental even in darkness. The futuristic space travel towards the dying star brings awe and gives the feel of reaching the infinite point.

The film can be interpreted as many puzzles with many answers. The present is the key or where the purpose of the film builds up. As we see High Jackman as Tomas makes his way up in to the pyramid facing a great Mayan and the next scene we see Hugh Jackman bald and clean shaven as a monk meditating in a big huge glass container traveling in space, it never lands its feet on the ground. When Tommy in the present depressed and hopeless shows up with Izzi (Rachel Weisz) who clearly seem to be expecting and accepting death is where we get some stability over the screen. Tommy an oncologist is trying to find a cure through a testing procedure by a piece of fragment from a Central America originated tree over a monkey, Donovan. The “tree of life” runs common in all the three stories. Whether the stories represent time period? At least two does in perspective of me. But that’s the beauty, you can assume it however you want it to be. This morphological property of the film is the reason for the riddle and the solution too.

In the three stories, the male lead character by Hugh Jackman strongly believes of curing death (“Death is a disease”). Along with him, due to the creative concurrence over the screen with the audience, we blindly believe that. But the story does not depend on the believability. It is the fight of us trying to understand what the hell is happening out here. It is normal and it is something Aronofsky wants to ask you. This curious itch makes us to ponder more into this beautiful visual complexity of life.

The film is a strong love story and a story of grief. I thought that the fight and struggle the characters of Hugh Jackman put through to rescue their beloved looked flimsy. In the “past” sequences, Tomas is a blind follower and fanatic of Spain and its Queen again played by Weisz. There the love is for the country but yes it mounts up to the queen. The hunger and desire for immortality on those times would have been far more vigorous. This explains his passion over the hunt. But of all, it is end of day a book written by Izzi before her final journey towards the inevitability. The part which might not convince on emotional front is the present, the love of Tommy. The grief might initially be considered immediate and lot many scenes does not build up to support it. And I realized that the whole movie is the support of that love. His painful workaholic nature, the denial of the obvious and the journey far away from time and magnitude regardless of whether it is real or imagination marks the dedication and the love Tommy has over Izzi.

The endless life now a day is not a big time significant subject. With inventions made, sciences explored and reasoning for everything, biological obvious failure is something every one got used to. Yet the loss of loved one is painful and the struggle to make them live a bit longer has been the ultimate war by humans over the nature of life. We know the end but still the grief is unavoidable. Arnosfsky extracts the religious philosophies for that to be implied in the movie. Is a film need to be of such complexity to have it viewed numerous times to get a meaning out of it? It is worth it when the film makes you to watch it again and rewards for the effort. The term “complex” is sometimes the characteristic what the director want to convey and out here the complexity of life becomes the essence.

The lightings are used in such a way to have the screen oozing with the colour of gold. Aronosfsky used it for the symbolism of wealth and the enigma of materialism the humans have. It is glossy but I did not find it as relative as he says. As said earlier, I was confused in my first viewing. I would also say, I was disappointed and believe whoever watches it will be. I would ask them to go back and watch it again and again. I would not say that you will get the meaning, but every time it is been watched, one thing fills up the gap. The reasoning formulated by one will be different from other. Some might think, the three stories do exactly represent the time periods and in all three the realization of inevitability is learned the extreme way of arduous hardship. Another might be the partial specification of time which is my observation. The past is a fiction and the future is the imagination while the present is the real. The culmination of the past is completed in the present as Tommy finishes the final chapter in Izzi’s book and the imagination of future resolves itself due to that. Some might even think that all three does not exist at all. Everything runs by unreal but organic experience of a story to be confused. Either way, the end is certain. Arnofsky makes it sweeter and makes us accept it for what it is.