Pretty...dull(Originally published 2006)
Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain" is high-concept, metaphysical trash that shoots for the heavens--literally--but which likely will leave some wondering how they paid eight bucks to walk through the doors of hell.
Aronofsky ("Pi," "Requiem for a Dream") wrote and directed this long-delayed film as if he just tossed back a few hallucinogenic mushrooms--and then tossed back a few more. His film is so lofty, confusing and pretentious, it floats free from the director's grasp into a haze of computer-generated imagery that's lovely to look at, for sure, but which comes to mean nothing. Almost every frame of this movie is designed to achieve a kind of tidy physical symmetry while the busy plot, poor thing, is left to molder in soft focus.
The movie features three interweaving story lines, none of them satisfying because none does what Aronofsky intends them to do--form a meaningful, cohesive whole. Oh, you can see the connections--they're written all over the screen--but are you moved by them the way Aronofsky intends to move you? Maybe if you're from the Mayan underworld Xibalba--but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The film stars Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz in three roles, which in brief go like this--in the 16th century, Jackman is the hirsute Spanish conquistador Tomas, who is charged by the beautiful Queen Isabella (Weisz) to find the Fountain of Youth in Central America. Why? One suspects because Chanel or Lancome had yet to set up shop, but there are other reasons, which we'll leave for you.
In the present, Jackman is the scientist Tommy, who is fighting to stop the "disease of death" from killing his ill wife, Izzi (Weisz), who is suffering from a brain tumor. To do so, he also will need to find the key to eternal youth in an effort to keep her alive. This is the most fully realized and potentially interesting part of the movie (it features Ellen Burstyn as Tommy's boss), though Aronofsky squanders it by making Tommy and Izzi so irritatingly dull, and by interrupting their story with that of another.
Cut to the 26th century, where Jackman now is Tom, a bald bloke who floats in a bubble and eats bark from the Biblical Tree of Life. Trippy? Sure, particularly since he sails around space in the lotus position and comes to have a thing for flowers best not revealed here.
So, what does it all mean? On some obscure level, Aronofsky seems to be probing how life blooms within the not-so-absolute process of death, but it's never made clear in the malaise of undercurrents that sink the show, and only the most curious and patient will care.
In this movie, we're not offered the red pill or the blue pill to ponder the meaning of life, death, the afterlife and alternative universes. Instead, we're offered thick white sap from a breathing hairy tree. Best not to lap it, as Tom does--and best not to see the movie.
Grade: D+
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