The Fountain (2006)

Directed by: Darren Aronofsky | 96 minutes | action, drama, romance, science fiction | Actors: Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, Marcello Bezina, Alexander Bisping, Ellen Burstyn, Cliff Curtis, Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Donna Murphy, Ethan Suplee, Sean Patrick Thomas

Let’s make it clear right away: ‘The Fountain’ is not a ‘Pi’, not a ‘Requiem for a Dream’ – “Those movies are dead now,” said Darren Aronofsky at the Ghent film festival when explaining his new film – and ‘The Fountain’ isn’t ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ either. The comparison between these two films, which is made so much in the media, seems out of the blue. There is only one image in ‘The Fountain’ that is reminiscent of ‘2001’: When Tommy is in the hospital crying in the hallway – his wife Isabel is dying – he looks into another room through a crack. He sees an old man with Tommy’s wedding ring on. Here lies Tommy himself, as a husband, dying, because his wife in the next room also dies. It’s a nod to Stanley Kubrick’s classic, but no more than that.

‘The Fountain’ is not a great spectacular science fiction film, not a new form of cinema or ambitious misproduct. It is a very beautiful little film about the unconditional and destructive love of a man for his wife, depicted in different times. And with that, Darren Aronofsky takes a big step forward. ‘Pi,’ his first film, was little more than a beautifully designed web of paranoid conspiracy thoughts. His second film, “Requiem for a Dream,” was also just a straightforward and superficial story about people perishing from addiction. However, the visually overwhelming style made this shortcoming quickly forgotten.

In ‘The Fountain’ Aronofsky shows for the first time that he can do more than link beautiful images to a fierce montage. Visually, the film is a gem, but Aronofsky is clearly holding the brakes. His editing is calm, the visual effects beautiful and original, but they all serve the themes of love, death, and eternal life. The theme in the film is unfortunately a bit undermined by its own story. The story is too compelling. The viewer is clearly steered in a certain direction, something that does not fit well with the almost passive imagery of the film. However, this sometimes irritatingly repetitive and compelling tone of the story, expressed in the film by the voice of the deceased Isabel who continues to harass Tom, does bring us closer to Tom’s restless state of mind. It is, after all, his story told here. Beautifully portrayed by Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, Tom and Isabel are the main characters in the film, the universal woman and man, the Adam and Eve. The Tree of Life plays the third major role as the bringer of new life, but also as the bringer of death, two sides of life that are so beautifully connected in the film. Tom’s wedding ring is another important motif in the film. Tom’s obsession with this ring – in the 26th century he painted dozens of rings on his arms because he lost that one long ago – shows that he is blind to the symbolism, the material form, of his love for Izzy. Where Isabel is still only an intangible abstraction, the (infidel) Tom(as) remains obsessed with retrieving her in tangible form.

‘The Fountain’ is a mature, valuable film that is barely tangible because of its weaknesses. What follows after seeing the film is only awe and resignation.