Cosmic Mumbo Jumbo

Rating: 3/10 (23 September 2007)

The Fountain is a weird and disappointing mess. The film is incoherent and confusing and it's a shame because U.S. movies should be more adventurous and experimental, but I came away with no clear idea what the film was about. Although, Jackman's strange, intense performance did make me laugh.
There are three intertwined story lines and the film weaves in-and-out,back-and-forward in time and space. Hugh Jackman plays two characters: Tomas, a 16th century Spanish conquistador, and Tommy Creo, a present day scientist. Both are humorless, driven, unsympathetic obsessives who seek immortality to protect the women in their lives. The lovely Rachel Weisz plays Queen Isabella of Spain, who is under threat from the inquisition. Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden to prevent them from eating from the Tree of Life and achieving immortality. Isabella sends Tomas to South America to find the Tree which is located on top of a Mayan temple. On contact Tomas turns into a plant.
Centuries later, Isabel (also Weisz) is dying and her husband, Tommy (a scientist), tries to find a cure for cancer to save her life. Later, Tommy loses his hair and spends eternity floating around far flung galaxies seated in the lotus position. He looks like a Buddhist monk or Hare Krishna devotee and talks to a tree on a barren asteroid. The tree could be Isabel, but we don't find out if the tree talks back to him.
Jackman plays a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he is very angry and obsessed . Weisz looked beautiful and radiant but seemed to belong in another movie. The Fountain obviously has intellectual pretensions but literal interpretations of the Book of Genesis are out of fashion and speculation on the Biblical notion of immortality seem somewhat irrelevant. I originally assumed the director must have a real vision and something important to say given the work involved in making this "epic". But the film's ideas seemed more like pretentious mumbo jumbo made under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.