Visual poetry

Rating: 8/10 (29 January 2007)

In Requiem for a Dream, director Darren Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique used innovative techniques to mimic the effects of drugs taken by the film's protagonists, fish eye lenses deforming the living space and fast motion distorting the conversation time-frame. In The Fountain, the same team attempt to convey more of a mystical experience, with story layers little more than props for elaborate and stunning visual metaphors.
On a basic level, Hugh Jackman represents man's eternal struggle to save the woman he loves. In 16th Century Spain, he is a Conquistador searching for the Fountain of Youth in a Mayan Garden of Eden. When he succeeds, Queen Isabel of Spain will be his Eve. As a modern day scientist, he is trying to find a cure to save his wife, Izzi, who is dying of cancer and who is also writing a book called The Fountain. As a 26th Century astronaut, he is trying to grasp these mysteries that have always seemed just out of reach.
The genre and style of the film, like its subject matter, is elusive. At first, it seems determinedly weird, like David Lynch with no clues. As it develops, there is more than a nod to the elaborate aesthetic of films like Cremaster or the favourite of psychedelic cinema-goers, 2001. You become wrapped up in a visual overload of spectacular beauty (but if you were thinking of casually popping some acid before going to see it, you should be aware that there are also many dark, menacing images). This is no sanitised flight of fancy - it has more in common with Pan's Labyrinth than Star Trek. The futuristic images have an almost Matthew Barney -like organic evolution to them, whereas those of the Spanish Inquisition create a mandala of horror that fascinates at the same time that it shocks. A sense of Pandorian menace is rarely far from the explosion of visual beauty that constantly assaults our senses.
So what of the story? It is here that The Fountain is at its weakest. It creates intoxicating images of life, death, and re-birth but the theoretical connections are hazy at best. In the most developed of the tripartite, intertextual stories, Dr Tom Crio's experiments on monkeys will, he hopes, yield a method of shrinking the brain tumour affecting his wife. It is his love for her that motivates him to push beyond protocol. It also blinds him to the fact that he is making a remarkable scientific breakthrough - that of reversing the aging process. The film delicately weaves fringe science, Mayan myth, and symbols of the memories and inspirations that live forever when someone dies. We see the conflict of scientific and artistic temperaments - Tommy never, it seems, has enough time to explore the simple poetry of life with Izzi, with things like the first snow. She wants him to help her finish her book. "Please, leave me alone - I don't know how it ends," he says to her early on. The words haunt him later as they take on a different meaning.
A haunting score and remarkable special effects support a movie that has more talent than there were perhaps dollars to support. The Fountain is avant-garde and so far from the mainstream that you shouldn't even consider it unless you are prepared for a serious challenge. But if you are, you may be amply rewarded. The feint-hearted will dismiss it as a pretentious mess while aficionados will extol its haunting beauty. Whatever you do, don't even think of watching it on DVD.