Instead of a film about a tragedy, a tragedy about a film

Rating: 5/10 (21 May 2007)

I'm a big fan of Darren Aronofsky (and of "deep" films, and science fiction). After watching "Pi" in one of the several smaller theatres in which it was released, I made mental note of him as a writer/director to watch, and spread predictions of future great things to come. In "Requiem for a Dream", I saw confirmation of my prediction (as, apparently, did tens of thousands of IMDb voters, who put it at #61 on the top 250 list). So, when I read the advanced publicity for "The Fountain", my thought was that it might be a truly great film, possibly a candidate for "best film ever" - Aronofsky, with a big budget, a long filming and production schedule, making a science fiction film.
Not for lack of desire, I missed seeing "The Fountain" in a theatre, watching it just last night on DVD (which, thanks to recent upgrades in my home gadgetry inventory  a 42" LCD TV  and decent sound equipment, is now almost on a par with the small theatre where I saw "Pi"). My expectation being what it was, I was rapt and attentive for through the whole 96 minutes, and, having a summary idea of what it was about, was able to follow it well, but after 15 minutes, was dreadfully aware that the film was only working for me because I was prepared for it, and was actively filling in its many discontinuities and exposition failures. By the end, rather than feeling on the edge of a consuming mystery (as I did after "Pi"), or overwhelmed by tragedy (as I did in "Requiem"), I felt I'd witnessed a hint of a film that could have been, a jigsaw puzzle complete enough to reveal a picture, but with such gaps that one couldn't for even a moment not be aware of its incompleteness - instead of a film about a tragedy, a tragedy about a film.
I saw it with my wife, who was indifferent to "Pi" but utterly enthused by "Requiem". Her opinion was a simple "that was awful". When we discussed it afterwards, and I referred to "the bubble spaceship", she responded "that was a spaceship? I thought it was a dream sequence." When she asked me if Thomas/Dr. Tommy/Space Oddity Tom was the same person, somehow rendered immortal and surviving his floral outbreak in sixteenth century, I realized that, while I was pretty sure the answer was "no. Thomas and Dr. Tommy had separate births. Aided by his pharma-botanical research data, Dr. Tommy travels to present day Mexico, locates the Tree of Life atop the lost Mayan ziggurat, and, in the far future, travel to Xibalba/the Orion Nebula with it in an advanced bubble spaceship." Having read that the working title of "The Fountain" was "The Last Man", I vaguely speculated that Astronaut Tom was the last living human, perhaps living in a trans-human society in which all other humans have been uploaded into computers.
IMHO Aronofsky's style, and strength, lies in his ability to evoke a powerful emotional response with a sparse sketch of details  incompleteness and gaps are what make his films work. In "The Fountain", however, the gaps are so vast that most audience members either can't fill them, or must work so hard to do so that they're distracted from the film's goal of an emotional exploration of life/death/sacrifice/rebirth. For many audience members who can bridge the gaps, this goal is old territory, and a let-down. Though apparently several thousand IMDb voters are among them, the fraction of the $10,000,000-worth of viewers who could both follow the movie and not be underwhelmed by it is, I think, small.
On a side note, the bubble-ship scenes were reminiscent of 1972's "Silent Running", starring Bruce Dern. I wonder if Aronofsky and the co-creators of "The Fountain" have seen it?