Pure beauty

Rating: 9/10 (7 May 2007)

Many people, mostly critics, have accused The Fountain of being pretentious; of being an esoteric, manipulative mish-mash that clamors about its own importance in every scene.
While I can see and understand the angle where these people are coming from, I think The Fountain is one of those films where you just need to stop thinking. I don't mean stop thinking in a bad way - not like with a Michael Bay film; rather, one needs to immerse himself in the flow of the images, the atmosphere and the message Aronofsky's film is trying to convey. It may not have a really deep meaning or one that hasn't been dealt with in film yet, but Aronofsky, behind all the flashy visuals, delivers it with such an honesty and passion that I have not seen in years, in any film.
The mistake Aronofsky does make is that he thinks he needs to make this message more complex, more ambiguous in order to make viewers susceptible to it. And so he goes a bit overboard with the closing scenes. He doesn't know when enough is enough, and that detracts a bit from The Fountain's elegance and beauty.
Nonetheless, this film is one of the most enjoyable pictures I've seen this year, one that really doesn't deserve the hate it gets.