"The Fountain"

Rating: 9/10 (10 January 2008)

I like to think of myself as a fairly universal film viewer, in that I watch both mainstream and art house films. Personally I don't really like the fact that there is such a thing as art house cinema  films are for everyone, and we should all be given the chance to watch them, whatever their subject matter, country of origin, etc. Thank goodness, then, for DVDs, or else I know I probably would have had to wait a very long time before seeing "The Fountain".
This film totally staggered me. I knew I was in for a wild ride in a technological sense, and I wasn't proved wrong. The visual effects, particularly those set in the "future/inner self" segments of the film are awesome to watch and beautiful. But this film has a hell of a lot of emotion in it too, and I wasn't expecting to be taken on a wild ride inwards.
I guess it's kind of difficult to work out the exact synopsis  Aronofsky gives the plot just enough ambiguity for everyone to have their own opinion on what exactly is going on. It all revolves around the characters of Tommy and Izzie, played respectively by Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. Izzie is sick, dying of a brain tumour, and Tommy has made it his mission to find a cure for it and save her life. Izzie, meanwhile, spends her time writing a manuscript for a novel about a Spanish conquistador who is sent on a seemingly impossible expedition by his love, the Queen of Spain  again, both of these characters played by Jackman and Weisz.
This film is a real tour de force for both these actors, and Weisz is fast becoming one of my top five favourite actresses who make films watchable simply because they are in them. Thankfully, this doesn't have to be the case with "The Fountain". Jackman is probably the stand out performance here, however, his character (or characters) going through a wide range of emotions and journeys whose endings, though perhaps are sometimes predictable, are not tedious in their predictability.
Several images repeat themselves through the film; for example a ring, skin, and, perhaps most important of all, a tree. Not just any tree, mark you, but the Tree of Life, the perhaps less famous one from the book of genesis in the Bible, the one whose slightly overshadowed by the big bad Tree of Knowledge. If anything, this film made me actually see for the first time what several of the sentences mean in this segment of the biblical text, words that I and I'm sure a lot of others would have simply blanked over.
I urge you to see this film. I know it won't be everybody's cup of tea  after all, that's why it's not mainstream. It's intellectual, has a confusing plot line, only has two major stars in it, and it's director's last film was "Requiem For A Dream", another flick which divided film goers and critics alike. But it's also about grief, about love and hope and of acceptance. This would be a great therapy film for those going through a terminal illness, or for those who have recently lost someone in that way. It is a beautiful, beautiful film, and the first chance that you get, please, watch it.
9/10