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Chicago International Film Fest
The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky, US)
Watching The Fountain at Northwestern University’s downtown campus felt more like an interrogation than a screening. The “ushers” wore all black ensembles and prowled the aisles every twenty minutes with, no exaggeration, night vision goggles, to make sure nobody was using their cell phones, even though the ticket-tearers demanded proof that your phone was off before admitting you into the theater. I’m not sure if the heightened security was due to Warner Bros. paranoia or if they just assumed the mostly college student audience were probably assholes with no theater etiquette. It was distracting, to say the least. But before the secret service released their goons, the director and co-writer of The Fountain Darren Aronofsky gave a brief interview on the trials of trying to make this film for the last six years. Originally started in 2001, the film anchored Brad Pitt as its lead. $18 million dollars later, Pitt quit the production to be in Troy and the film puttered to a halt. Aronofsky picked up the fragments of his three-tiered epoch again a few years later with a reduced budget (a mere $35 million) saying it was “in his blood.”
The distraught and long-anticipated sci-fi drama (Aronofsky’s last film, Requiem for a Dream, was released in 2000) is a metaphysical love story that spans 1,000 years and centers on Hugh Jackman’s (Tomas, Tommy, Tom) quest for the Tree of Life to gain immortality. As Tomas, Jackman is a 16th century conquistador commissioned by Queen Isabella (Rachel Weisz) to travel to South America and slaughter the savage, uncultured Mayans, who guard the Tree and obviously wouldn’t know what to do with eternal life if it came and bit them in the loin cloth. Just as Tomas is about to be decapitated by a miffed Mayan priest, we are fast-forwarded 1,000 years to a bald, cancer patient version of Jackman (now Tom) who lives in a bubble in outer space. Tom spends his days talking to a tree (Weisz, presumably) and living off her bark until they reach Xibalba, a nebula where the dead are reborn. The synopsis claimed that Tom was some kind of futuristic astronaut, but he looked more like an emaciated yoga instructor. The 2006 version of the story, which is the most dynamic, involves Tommy, a neurosurgeon desperately trying to find a cure for brain cancer, which his wife Izzi happens to be dying from. Izzi is also writing a book called The Fountain that chronicles their reincarnation stories all over again. Tommy is unable to deal with Izzi’s death and spends a lot of time destroying furniture a la Wolverine instead of being with her in her last moments. Although proffered as a love story, Weisz (Isabella, Izzi, Tree) exists mostly as an apparition throughout the film, spouting little vignettes on Mayan mysticism to a volatile, brow-furrowing Tommy who seems disgruntled and bored. It’s curious that Weisz (Aronofsky’s partner in real life) gets such little screen time, especially in relation to Jackman’s hysterical breakdowns.
While the film’s visuals are stunning (macro photography was used to make the film last longer), when placed in congruence with the cliché theme of love transcending time, it tends to border on the absurd, particularly when Tomas succeeds in drinking from the sap of the Tree of Life, only to be transformed into a patch of floral shrubbery. Reportedly booed at the Venice Film Festival, only to receive a standing ovation a few days later, The Fountain is certainly a kind of fantastical anomaly, and it remains to be said whether it will truly stand the test of time.
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