Pretentious psycho-spiritualbabble for us Western dummies

Rating: 5/10 (12 May 2007)

Overbearingly ambitious metaphysical yarn was one of those projects passed around and restructured around different actors a few times and unfortunately, it shows. Darren Aronofsky's long awaited follow up to his break-thru smash Requiem for a Dream may have noble intentions but has second rate written all over. In his undercooked and convoluted script, Aronofsky will proceed to beat viewers over the head with themes on death and rebirth in so many ways. Three different scenarios, all centering around the underdeveloped love story, weave within one another in a way I'm sure will remain appealing to the young demographic it will reluctantly take on, but feels embarrassingly trite for the demographic thought to be in mind.
Let's start with The Fountain's appropriation of a much stressed spiritual context. In what was supposed to feel like allegory for the soul's evolution instead is butchered into three convoluted narratives which do little to exemplify the material at hand. For the most part, scenes in The Fountain have the unfortunate air of a thrift-store film, one can absolutely sense a middle-ground compromise that tarnishes any authenticity the film had going for itself.
All of Aronofsky's cinematic trickery (and even a few sublimely framed shots) cannot rescue The Fountain from drying up. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz aren't the worst overpaid actors around, though what they bring to this vision stays superficially deep. Unable to master dynamics needed to lend the epic pull this movie posits, Jackman and especially Weisz turn in disappointingly unimportant, selfish performances. It all adds up to little more then a time traveling soap opera with some shiny eye candy thrown in. Viewers may enjoy piecing fragments together in order to gaze upon a naive vision in all it's splendor, but most wiser enough to feel a stinging pandering to ones sense of soul will achieve little resonant redemption for following this through. It's heart may completely be in the right place, and for that we will still hold hope for Mr. Aronfsky in future endeavors, but unfortunately I must declare the film an undeniable failure in any greatness it seeks.