The Fountain is a sci-fi/fantasy movie by writer/director Darren Aronofsky, director of Requiem for a Dream. It’s essentially an analysis of modern views and attitudes towards death, the afterlife and resurrection.
The story centres around a scientist and his terminally ill wife, played by Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weiss respectively. He, Jackman, is slowly driving himself to distraction desperately trying to cure his wife’s illness as she tries to come to terms with her own mortality. Sound familiar? It is a common generally overdone plot. So why am I recommending this then?
Firstly, I didn’t find this film depressing in the slightest. There is a very concious effort to light Tommy in darkness and half light throughout the film while bathing his wife, Izzi, in bright pure light. This is not a dark ‘woe is me’ mourning of a life tragically cut short but rejoicing at a life lived and understood.
There is something about the treatment of the cinematography in this film that I just adore. God knows how Aronofsky categorises himself but the general style puts me in mind of the surrealist painters, Dali with the full benefits of CGI imagine the possibilities, and El Greco (16th C. Spanish painter, don’t ask, though feel free to Google. Very interesting).
While based in the present elements of the film are set both in the past, the future and the mythological. An internal novel tells the tale of Izzi’s characterisation of Tommy as her Conquistador fighting to save Spain and her monarchy from the threat of the Spanish Inquisition in which she blends elements of Mayan and Christian history, which come to form the basis of her core beliefs.
It is difficult to describe this film as anything but interesting, there is no plot as such, more a journey. A worthy film for a quiet thoughtful evening.
Nílim anseo 