Boring, confusing and pretentious

Rating: 4/10 (18 November 2006)

There are those will call "The Fountain" "heart-breakingly beautiful," or "exceptional film-making" or "absolutely fantastic" or even an "outstanding sci-fi drama full of action, suspense and love." Others will describe it as a confusing, boring, pretentious piece of claptrap that leaves one more confounded after they leave the theater than when they entered.
Put me in the latter category.
I wanted to like this movie, but like most other films I have had to preview this year, I came away extremely disappointed. To counter one of the above-mentioned descriptions, this picture contains neither science, nor fiction, nor suspense nor love; and it certainly does not contain one iota of action.
And, from director Darren Aronofsky ("Pi," "Requiem for a Dream"), I expected more  a lot more.
Now many smug, self-styled intellectuals  who blur confusion with artistic merit and illiteracy with charm  will chastise me as a Philistine, but I'm not THAT stupid. Call me an idiot, if you will, but I do know what a good, compelling film is. I know what intelligent, quality entertainment is (I mean, my favorite movie is "The Bicycle Thief," after all).
"The Fountain" is not one of those motion pictures.
To make my point, please allow me to describe what happens, if that's even possible. The movie begins with Hugh Jackman (better known as "Wolverine," playing three roles) as a conquistador trying to find the Tree of Life in South America. He's soon killed by Mayans.
Next we jump to Jackman (better known as "Wolverine") made up to look like David Carradine in "Kung Fu," talking to himself and making out with a dead tree inside a snow globe - which is floating through space.
Finally, Jackman ("Wolverine") is a brain surgeon who tries a new cure (from a South American tree) on a baboon. Conveniently, his wife/girlfriend/lover, Rachel Weisz (Oscar winner for "The Constant Gardner") has a brain tumor, too.
It's here that the plot begins to meander like a 757 with a missing tail stabilizer. It goes back and forth from the Spanish Inquisition (nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition, and I didn't, either) to the Hare Kirshna inside the snow globe to current times and back and forth, again and again.
By the way, Weisz also plays Queen Isabella, who sends the conquistador to the New World with a crazed friar to find the tree; while her modern-day alter ego has written a story called "The Fountain," which tells us what is going on in this movie (if that's even conceivable).
Friends, the bottom line message of this film is we are all going to die. Yep, that's basically it; we are eventually all going to shuffle off this mortal coil. I needed 90 minutes of time I'll never recover to tell me something I knew way back in one of my first lives? Yes, the reincarnation theme weaves through this story, as well.
Another problem self-important movies like this have is that no character speaks above a whisper, making it seem like everything they say is of the utmost importance (see "Lake House" for the most recent example); it isn't.
Even the Grand Inquisitor (Steven McHattie) speaks in low tones, preaching to tortured prisoners that "the body is a prison for souls; and Death frees us all." No kidding. I was praying (just like they probably were) for the sweet release of Death myself several times.Also, Academy Award winner Ellen Burstyn ("Alice Doesn't Live Here, Anymore"), is completely wasted, which is just one of many sins Aronofsky commits.
Still, many will be swept up in the facade and believe they are actually seeing the best movie of all-time. One critic on the Internet Movie Data Base even gushed that "Hugh Jackman's performance ranks among the greatest male screen performances in cinema history." Yeah, I guess Jack Nicholson's work in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" or "Five Easy Pieces"; Robert DeNiro's "Raging Bull"; Marlon Brando's "On The Waterfront"; Humphrey Bogart's "Casablanca" Al Pacino's "Dog Day Afternoon" and Jimmy Stewart's "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington," among many, many, many others, all come in behind Wolverine's portrayal in this movie.
I suppose Aronofsky (who also wrote the story and sceenplay) had a very valid and compelling point for this film; and I'm sure he didn't mean to pull a heavy black curtain over that meaning, obscuring any relevance for the audience. It just sort of happened that way.
A wonderful soundtrack (the Kronos Quartet, the rock band Mogwai and Clint Mansell) and somewhat competent cinematography (Matthew Libatique, "Phone Booth"), does not make this a great, a near-great or even a good film.
I would tell patrons to skip this one and see "Bobby," instead, but that movie is even worse than "The Fountain." Go figure.