The Fountain is scientific, romantic and more
By Nav Purewal
Issue date: 11/30/06 Section: Film & Music
Of the forty films I saw at this year's festival, the one I most anticipated was Darren Aronofsky's follow-up to Requiem For A Dream, the sci-fi romance epic, The Fountain. Early buzz on the film was strong, but that was quickly shattered after it was panned by the Variety and Hollywood Reporter critics, and booed at the Venice Film Festival. None of this prevented me from showing up for the first industry screening ninety minutes before show-time and pleading desperately for the film not to suck. It more than obliged.
In many ways The Fountain is reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh's Solaris, and the similarly mixed critical reception isn't a surprise. Less than half the people I met who'd seen The Fountain thought it was good, and only one other person thought it was the masterpiece I know it to be. It takes a particularly daring artistic ambition to tell what is essentially a thousand-year love story in under 100 minutes, and Aronofsky pulls it off marvelously. Which is not to say effortlessly.
The Fountain was originally budgeted at $75 million with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett set to play the married couple at the film's center (coincidentally they play a married couple in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel). Due to delays and artistic differences, Pitt walked off the picture to work on Troy, and production was cancelled. After giving up on the project and adapting it into a well received comic book, Aronofsky was given a reduced budget of $35 million to make the film in its present incarnation. The result is so stunning that, were he not so damn good in Babel, Brad Pitt would look like an idiot.
And what a stunning film it is. The advertising is misrepresentative in its focus on the epic elements of the film. This is a very intimate present-day story about one man's struggle to save the woman he loves. Along the way, Aronofsky shifts the attention to 16th century Spain and Central America, and 26th century space travel, but these threads are in service to the emotions evoked by the central story. There were two other strong films at the festival that combined fantasy and tragedy, but in both Pan's Labyrinth and The Fall, the fantastic elements are understandably a respite from reality's horrors. In The Fountain they intensify them, and strengthen the film's underlying message.
Whereas Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind used a sci-fi conceit to express the idea that it's better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all, The Fountain boldly, sadly makes the opposite claim. No one witnessing the heartsick, tortured sight of Hugh Jackman's 500-year-old Tom Verde could argue that he's any better off to have once known true love, and for a time it becomes impossible to argue with the pessimism of this beautiful, transcendent, and ultimately redemptive love story. This is one of the year's best films.
In many ways The Fountain is reminiscent of Steven Soderbergh's Solaris, and the similarly mixed critical reception isn't a surprise. Less than half the people I met who'd seen The Fountain thought it was good, and only one other person thought it was the masterpiece I know it to be. It takes a particularly daring artistic ambition to tell what is essentially a thousand-year love story in under 100 minutes, and Aronofsky pulls it off marvelously. Which is not to say effortlessly.
The Fountain was originally budgeted at $75 million with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett set to play the married couple at the film's center (coincidentally they play a married couple in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel). Due to delays and artistic differences, Pitt walked off the picture to work on Troy, and production was cancelled. After giving up on the project and adapting it into a well received comic book, Aronofsky was given a reduced budget of $35 million to make the film in its present incarnation. The result is so stunning that, were he not so damn good in Babel, Brad Pitt would look like an idiot.
And what a stunning film it is. The advertising is misrepresentative in its focus on the epic elements of the film. This is a very intimate present-day story about one man's struggle to save the woman he loves. Along the way, Aronofsky shifts the attention to 16th century Spain and Central America, and 26th century space travel, but these threads are in service to the emotions evoked by the central story. There were two other strong films at the festival that combined fantasy and tragedy, but in both Pan's Labyrinth and The Fall, the fantastic elements are understandably a respite from reality's horrors. In The Fountain they intensify them, and strengthen the film's underlying message.
Whereas Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind used a sci-fi conceit to express the idea that it's better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all, The Fountain boldly, sadly makes the opposite claim. No one witnessing the heartsick, tortured sight of Hugh Jackman's 500-year-old Tom Verde could argue that he's any better off to have once known true love, and for a time it becomes impossible to argue with the pessimism of this beautiful, transcendent, and ultimately redemptive love story. This is one of the year's best films.
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