The Fountain
Thursday, 25 Jan 2007 17:35
Hugh Jackman deals with love and death in The Fountain
Directed by Darren Aronofsky, out January 25th, starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, running time 97 minutes
In a nutshell…
An intensely personal film about mortality.
What's it all about?
The Fountain tackles the strange relationship between love and death. It uses three stories set in the past, present and future to extol the virtues of embracing mortality – and the pain which denial brings.
Its 'box-within-a-box' structure, which links the three stories together, runs the risk of being dangerously convoluted but in the end works fairly well. Five hundred years in the future, Tommy Creo travels in a goldfish-bowl spacecraft to save the woman he loves. Having apparently achieved immortality, he is haunted by memories of his dead wife, Izzi. She died from an incurable cancer in the present day.
Tommy's desperate efforts to solve the riddle's of his wife's illness, at the cost of spending the remaining time he has with her, haunt him across the centuries. So too does the story she wrote in her final days – The Fountain, in which a conquistador heads off to the Mayan jungles to find the original fountain of youth for his struggling love, Queen Isabel.
Jumping between the three stories, viewers are confronted with their own mortality and, more importantly, how they might respond to the death of a loved one. It's harrowing stuff.
Who's in it?
Hugh Jackman takes on the biggest role in this film. He is, by turns, a 16th century warrior, charging down Mayans in the jungles of America; a scientist making incredible discoveries in a hi-tech modern laboratory; and a 26th century astronaut as meditative as he is bald. That's a challenge for any actor, but the X-Men, Kate and Leopold and Van Helsing star pulls it off with a desperately intense performance.
Rachel Weisz, who won an academy award for her part in The Constant Gardener, plays opposite Jackman as the doomed Izzi/Queen Isabel. This film's thoughtful and rather arty nature suits the actress who once graced the Cambridge stages with her experimental theatre group.
As an example…
Dr Guzetti: Tommy, no one invents new drugs overnight, no one! You're not being rational. You can't fix everything!
Tom: Don't tell me what I can and can't do.
Dr Lillian Guzetti: Your wife needs you! Why are you here?
Tom: Why the f*** do you think I'm here?
Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars
Jackman certainly pours everything into his part but the film's best chance probably stands in the visual effects department. Building a spaceship one minute and a Spanish inquisition chamber the next has got to be worth some Academy Award brownie points, surely.
What the others say
"It's often maddening, because of its structure, and some of its visuals are pretentious nonsense. But, as a story of undying love, it's certainly unique" – New York Daily News
"Overflows with pretensions and absurdity" – USA Today
So is it any good?
Here's something everyone can agree on: Darren Aronofsky laboured extremely hard to put this picture out. Reports of him endlessly rehearsing Weisz and Jackman's scenes before filming sum up the intensity of the whole project. That doesn't result in overacting – just a general sense that everyone's trying really, really hard. At times it gets a little awkward, however.
The same is true of the century-hopping plot. Although the use of Mayan mythology about eternity and death is effective as an interlinking device, Weisz's repeated "finish it" line is rather unsubtly repeated again and again and again. Also grating is the repeated scene in which Jackman's character declines a walk in the snow, choosing work over time with his dying wife. It's a key scene but Weisz's "take a walk with me" is painfully am-dram on the big screen.
Despite these weaknesses – which culminate in the film's Kubrick-esque finale – The Fountain does what it sets out to do. It raises fundamental issues about death and life which every viewer, depending on their mood, will either deal with or suppress. It would have been wrong for Aronofsky to provide any real answers to the questions he raises; despite that, the importance of accepting the inevitability of death prevails above all.
That may not be the most cheery thought to take out into the streets – but, as The Fountain has made very clear, that's just the way it is.
6/10
Alex Stevenson
Agree with this review? Have a different opinion? Let us know your thoughts (without being too abusive to our poor reviewers please) and we'll post the best ones on the site.
Write your comments below: