The Fountain

Plot synopsis:
At its core, The Fountain is the story of a 21st-century doctor, Tom Creo (Hugh Jackman), losing his wife Izzi (Rachel Weisz) to cancer in 2005. As she is dying, Izzi begs Tom to share what time they have left together, but he is focused on his quest to find a cure for her.
While he's working in the lab, she writes the story entitled the "fountain" about 16th century Queen Isabella losing her kingdom to the Inquisition while her betrothed, conquistador Tomás Verde, plunges through the Central America forest in Mayan territory, searching for the Tree of Life offering immortality for his Queen and their love.
As she does not expect to see it, Izzi asks Tom to finish the outcome of the story for her. As they look out to the star of a nebula, she imagines, as the mayans did, that their souls will meet there after life and when the star goes supernova. In the 26th century, future space traveler Tommy travels there for the event, in a spaceship made of an enclosed biosphere containing the Tree of Life he seeded above her grave.
The three story lines are told nonlinearly, each separated by five centuries. The three periods are interwoven with match cuts and recurring visual motifs; Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz play the main characters for all three narratives. Even within a given narrative, the elements of that particular story are not told in chronological order.
Whether the actions in these stories are actual events, or symbolic, is not clarified; and, director Darren Aronofsky emphasized that the storylines in their time periods and their respective convergences were open to interpretation. The director has said of The Fountain's intricacy and underlying message, "[The film is] very much like a Rubik's Cube, where you can solve it in several different ways, but ultimately there's only one solution at the end." In a 2012 interview outlining the path of life depicted, Aronofsky stated that "ultimately the film is about coming to terms with your own death" oftentimes driven by love.
=== Tomás the conquistador ===
The film opens with conquistador Tomás Verde in New Spain fighting a horde of Mayans to gain entry into a pyramid, where he is attacked by a Mayan priest with a flaming sword. Through flashbacks, it is revealed that the conquistador has been commissioned by Queen Isabella of Spain to travel to the New World in search of the fountain of youth or Biblical Tree of Life and immortality. If Tomás can find it, she is convinced that she can put an end to the struggle between herself and an influential cleric during the Spanish Inquisition who is attempting to stop her search and usurp the throne. Isabella vows to spend eternity with Tomás upon his return, citing a correlation with Adam and Eve. When Tomás arrives at his destination, he finds that his fellow knights are exhausted and refuse to continue searching for the Tree of Life. A Franciscan monk discovers the location of the temple, but is killed while Tomás represses the mutiny amongst his officers. As the priest dies, he gives Tomás a ceremonial dagger and directs him towards the pyramid. Once he arrives at the pyramid, Tomás and his men are ambushed and Tomás is captured. He is forcefully directed to the top of the pyramid, and engages in combat with a Mayan priest wielding a flaming sword. Tomás is stabbed in the stomach, but just as the priest is about to kill him, future Tommy appears before the figurehead. The priest believes Tomás is the "First Father", apologizes and asks Tomás to usher him down the path of awe by slitting his throat. Tomás sacrificially kills the priest and proceeds to a pool with a large tree; convinced this is the Tree of Life. Tomás applies some of its sap to his torso and is cured of his stab wound. He drinks the sap flowing from the bark. But in a reenactment of the Mayan creation myth told earlier in the film, flowers and grass burst forth from his body and he literally gives rise to new life.
=== Tom the neuroscientist ===
Tom Creo is a doctor working on a cure using samples of the "Tree of Life", found through exploration in Central America, which are being tested for medicinal use for degenerative brain diseases in his lab in 2005. He is motivated by his wife Izzi's brain tumor, which has caused a rapid decline in her health. Izzi has used this time to assess the implications of death and comes to terms with her mortality, but Tom refuses to accept that she might die and has increasingly resolved to find a cure. She has written a book which apparently tells the story of Tomás the conquistador, but when she collapses at a museum, she becomes convinced that she won't live long and asks Tom to write the final chapter and "finish it". She dies shortly thereafter and Tom dedicates himself to curing not only her disease, but death itself. His colleagues fear that this drive has made him reckless, but they support him scientifically and emotionally at Izzi's funeral. As a final inspiration of love and devotion, Tom plants a sweetgum seed at Izzi's grave in the manner of a story she told him relating how a Mayan guide's dead father lived on in a tree nourished by the organic nutrients of the buried body.
=== Tommy the space traveler ===
This narrative for Tommy is set in deep space in a small, self-contained biosphere bubble spaceship. Jackman's character in this plot is alone, flying in outer space toward the golden nebula of Xibalba with a large tree and a few personal effects comprising his ship. While traveling, he meditates, performs t'ai chi, grows mushrooms and cuts pieces of bark from the tree for nourishment. He also converses with apparitions of Izzi. It is implied that the tree within the biosphere also represents Izzi and that Tommy has been transporting it to Xibalba with the hope that she will be restored to him. Tommy is also shown to have applied extensive, incremental tattooed ring patterns to both of his arms similar to the tattoo of his engagement ring from Izzi in 2006; it is implied that the tattoos mark the passage of time on his journey in 2500.
At the climax of the film, to Tommy's horror the tree finally dies just before arrival, as Izzy had also died just before a cure. A final apparition of Izzi appears, comforting Tommy in the face of his accepted impending death and suggesting that they may share an afterlife now. He finally understands and embraces his death, moments before the star goes supernova, engulfing the ship and everything within. The traveler's body is absorbed, but the tree flourishes back to life being engulfed by the star dying inside the nebula. Izzi's apparition picks a fruit from the new tree of life and hands it to Tom, the present-day neuroscientist, who plants it in Izzi's grave.

Tags: murder, thought-provoking, violence, alternate reality, atmospheric, flashback, psychedelic, philosophical, inspiring, romantic, historical, sentimental

Review:
More movies should cut down their running times like this; because there is not a wasted moment in The Fountain from start to finish, despite the movie still moving at an gregariously slow pace.
Five hundred years later, Tom travels through space on a quest to reach the place of tranquility that Izzi spoke fondly of, using the Tree as a device to get him to the answers he needs to rest his weary mind....In performances that can only be described as exquisite, Jackman and Weisz assist their director in opening up this knotty story through their soulful and romantic interpretations of desperation and peace.
Weisz is the face of love in "The Fountain," lending the film a flowering emotional core of the film.The Fountain" is masterful on so many unique levels, presenting a demanding filmgoing experience that should elicit a grand sense of awe on an emotional and spiritual level unlike anything you've seen this year.Aronofsky has out done himself again.....
I see a purity in the representation of first man and first woman, a purity that allows me to see the characters as archetypes that resemble the spiritual forces that have driven us for our eternity.Ebert said that it is a standard critical practice not to create a fiction that was not implicit within the film; but with a film like The Fountain, there are so many interpretations and meanings...deep thoughts linger in me while I watch, an ocean of experiences that dwells inside me, calm and enveloping.
All I knew beforehand was that the film was a science fiction and that it starred Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz (actors whom I like).
It won't be liked by many as so many of it is left to interpretation with a lot of questions but for me it's fascinating and is all a movie-watching experience should be..
Cynical hacks might decry this as a mawkish, facile rumination of saccharine proportions, but despite the sentimental themes, the film is never cloying, opting instead for a (sur)realistic portrayal of the nuances of one of life's most powerful emotions.The casting was superb: Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman are outstanding in their roles, with both offering utterly believable performances.
In fact, the segment (not scene; the story is split across three time periods) using the bulk of the effects is probably the shortest.Aronofsky ambitiously tackles heavy themes and concepts and he does it in a little over 90 minutes.
I've only seen this film once.The Fountain has three story lines: one set in the past, one in the present, and one set ostensibly in the future.
But going into the film open-minded, and just taking it all in (the beautiful cinematography/visual effects, powerful writing, wonderful direction) you'll no doubt have the time of your life.
If I see either of them on the street I will feel compelled to offer a handshake.I am convinced Darren Aronofsky is going to be regarded as one of the elite directors of our time before his career comes to an end.Overall, this movie is layered in intriguing elements.
At the same time, two more stories unfold, one in ancient Spain and the other in space, all somehow linked, presenting the idea of a man who seeks eternal life with his beloved.It's an unique movie, one which presents three apparently different stories but which all have the same core concept.
It tries to present the spiritual part of the story, but it somehow left the feeling that it wasn't all that connected as it should have been.All in all, I really liked this movie.
The Fountain was not entertaining, and the only thought it provoked was "How did this get a 7.8 rating on IMDb(as of this writing) and why didn't we leave the theater half an hour into the movie like the three people behind us?" Contrasting modern characters against characters from 16th Century Spain, and then throwing in a bunch of Zen and psychedelic imagery does not make the movie "deep." Nor does it make up for a shoddy, disconnected plot.
I've read, with great interest, the various interpretations and comments on The Fountain and while I appreciate that the film was open to interpretation and probably deserves re-watching to appreciate its finer points, I can't help feeling that it was left so open as to be almost utterly incomprehensible (assuming one was watching it without the synopsis to hand).
Seriously, this movie tried to hard to be art-house intelligent, that at least 10 well read and emotionally retarded Starbucks baristas must have been consulted during filming.Anyhow, this movie is pretentious, obvious nonsense made for that part of society that likes to stretch 4 sentences of plot into 2 hours of ridiculous pseudo intellectual posturing.
I did enjoy parts of the "conquistador" storyline, but other than those 10 minutes, I spent the rest of the time, as did the other 4 movie buffs who watched it with me, in disbelief that projects like this get funded.
I've come to the conclusion that people who enjoy movies like these enjoy them strictly because A) They make you "think" (which granted, is a good thing, but I much prefer PBS, books, and the news for that type of programming  also, this movie gets tagged as being "intellectual", but I'm having a hard time figuring out how the retelling of different ancient creation myths makes this film "smart"), and B) it's "cool" to like artsy garbage with little to no substance.
I regress.I had all the intentions in the world to write a nice long rant regarding why I disliked this film, with specific references, but I have just realized that I would lose more of my time with this horrible and egocentric "masterpiece".Unless you enjoy pretentious existential story lines and film-making, please avoid this thing like the plague.
(Okay, the visuals are pretty good, and I'd be okay with someone saying "great visuals, crap movie", but visuals alone do not make a film - not by half.)As for the story?
Trying to confuse your audience when you have the simplest of things to say does not make a film profound!) You will find yourself asking, 'Why couldn't this story have been told in ten minutes.' An agonizing watch..
There is something unique about this film in that not only does its plot and script not deliver, but the performances Jackman and Wiesz are completely and utterly uninteresting, despite their working overtime in the acting department - no matter how much Jackman weeps and smashes things up over the limp Weisz the film remains utterly uninteresting.Ultimately the overriding pseudo-intellectual pomposity wins over the powerful premise of the film and the terminal anti-climax left me absolutely unfulfilled.Trust me, folks, this film is not worth the money nor the time and effort - and I have found merit in The Toxic Avenger.
It is my belief that the modern section is real and that the other two exist within the book  this explanation helped me as it allowed me to focus on the emotion and themes within these sections rather than trying figure out the exact narrative reason for a bald man inside a spaceship that looks like a bubble.By doing this I was left with a film that I found interesting from start to finish, with the theme of movement from life to death and perhaps rebirth being one that was explored visually as much as it was in the material.
The space sequences will catch the eye most but I was just as impressed with the use of light in the present-day scenes as the use of distant light, being just out of the light etc was an excellent visual extension of the theme.As I expected, on the surface of it this is not an easy film to crack and, although not inaccessible, it is understandable why it didn't rip in a massive mainstream audience.
My problem is that it's so laden with clumsy and pretentious transcendental metaphors, delivered in that non- linear style, that it just ended up annoying me by totally undermining my ability to immerse myself in the movie and connect with the characters.For me, this film is overrated and just isn't my cup of tea at all..
when he was in his 'meditative-ninja' pose, floating in a bubble or when he was making out with the hairy tree).I think that Hugh Jackman cried in every scene, and every time he kissed something there was a lot of spit and it was gross.After the movie was over, I looked at my friend, she looked at me, and we laughed for about five minutes in the theater.
I am an avid movie goer, and I have to say this is the worst film I've seen in a long time.
It was just feeling a part of something that I can't explain, and I think the movie is something quite remarkable for being able to do that.I don't particularly feel like commenting on the performances of this film or the visuals because that is all anyone has been talking about lately.
The Fountain is a film of its own narrative and a very original one at that, I would argue, so it is no wonder why audiences are divided, but the critics are people who should be used to this kind of thing if they are true movie critics.
At the end of The Fountain I was definitely left with more questions than answers, and not necessarily in the greatest grandiose '2001' way either (befuddlement does need a little more rhythm then what comes out towards the end).But, as I said, I really did get very much involved with the picture, and the struggle of Tommy (Hugh Jackman, in one of his best performances), to try in the present day to find a cure for tumors, in order to possibly save his wife Izzi (Rachel Weisz, very lovely if not as compelling overall as in something like Constant Gardener).
There's an element of the movie the Neverending Story, I felt, that came into the movie quite well, as Tommy starts to read a book Izzi is writing about a Spanish conquistador in a search for her Queen (also Jackman and Weisz respectfully), called the 'Tree of Life', as said in the Bible.
Even for whatever (I think) it was trying to accomplish, it was just cumbersome and felt sloppy.I have never used drugs, but I imagine the experience to be something like watching this film.
The story is about timeless topics like life, death, love, faith, hope, all which conjure big emotions that are brilliantly expressed by both Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz.
You most likely have read the reviews, and are aware of the lead characters and the 3 time-lines.And that's where the impossibility of reviewing a movie like this shows itself, everything in this film is intertwined, and has hard to grasp as some famous Escher (whose known for his mind boggling pieces) art works.
Their have been a lot of advances in technology in film over the past decade, this is the first movie I've ever seen that has used that technology to create an emotional and dramatic effect instead of just a shock and awe spectacle.
Also some person of non-film value would tell me, "You won't like it, it's a waste of time" Did I ask him for his review?
This is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time and I now understand why the manager at blockbuster didn't like it.
I don't believe you need to understand the movie first time round, (if anytime) but experience it, let it take you for the ride.Loved it, have now watched all of Aronofsky's work on the back of this..
Put simply, The Fountain isn't likely going to be in the top 10 worst movie list you've ever seen, but that doesn't mean it isn't bad.
Just when you think the film has given you all that it has to offer it surprises you with more and more amazing revelations.To deny yourself a movie like this would be a heinous act.
It may make it easier to understand, because before I first saw this movie, I saw the trailer, and it confused many people, including myself because it made it seem like Jackman and Weisz were traveling through time and space.
The director went out of his way to make Hugh as ugly as he could; not only physically, but as a shallow person.I can see this movie being redone with all of that in mind and make a true work of art in cinema by taking away the emptiness of this movie and filling it up with plot and acting that leaves you fulfilled instead of being left wanting for an actual story with some meat to it.
'The Fountain (2006)' comes close to pretentious portent, often feeling more like a collection of well-crafted images than a cohesive set of scenes in an actual narrative, but ultimately Aronofsky's personal yet eclectic tale of a man fighting back against the prospect of death is never dull nor meaningless.
I can't believe for a second that there weren't people around Aronofsky who thought this movie was completely indigestible bilge; unfortunately, none of them had the balls to tell him so.In "The Fountain," Hugh Jackman plays some sort of doctor in the near future who is engaged in research to slow the aging process (or something -- I was never entirely clear on this point).
So, while I see the great things in this film such as the acting and visuals I just can't get past the horribly drawn out story that in the end left me unfulfilled and confused.If you are looking for a deep and convoluted movie of romance with just a touch of action then you should check this out.
To top it all off, the movie absolutely REFUSES to end, so that even though it has a short running time (hardly over an hour and a half), it feels like Aronofsky was actually the one who found the formula for eternal life (and gave it to his movie!).
'The Fountain' really is a film that you have to think about to receive most rewarding movie experience, and multiple viewings are sure to be beneficial in understanding the intricacies of the plot and themes.
The message is clear, the story can be confusing at times, and it's almost open for interpretation by the end.This movie is truly visual poetry.
Anyone wanting twists and turns and an unexpected conclusion is going to be disappointed too, as above, you spend the film hoping for a good twist or original idea, and don't get any.Just because an awful lot of people are giving it 10/10 does not mean this is worth £6.99 of your money, all it means is they saw how pretty the visuals are and most likely didn't understand it (and how shallow and naive the plot was), ergo it must be amazing.
Very touching story and images.Another part of me felt the movie tried to spin way too much and at times seemed confusing.
to those who haven't watched it.....Don't BOTHER!Hugh Jackman is a good actor and i have watched most of his movies but WHAT THE HELL WAS HE THINKING THIS TIME?!i mean there was SOO much confusion!
While it is no doubt an excuse for some awe-inspiring visual creations, every time Aronofsky cuts to another storyline more distance is drawn between the audience and the characters in the movie.The plot, if you can follow this, involves a driven doctor (Jackman) trying to develop a cure for death.
Let me try to explain how good "the best movie of all times" is and put it like this: If I had to choose one movie to watch before I die, it would be "The Fountain".If You allow it, it will reach the deepest part of your heart and soul.
I'm having a hard time memorizing all the names of the reviewers here that think this is a wonderful movie, so I can avoid anything they recommend.The Fountain is one of the worst films I've ever seen.
This is easily the best movie I've ever seen.The Fountain takes the viewer on a journey though spiritual concepts, amazing scenarios and a very touching plot.Much of The Fountain touched my personal views and experiences in a very profound way and opened me to ways of thinking and visualization that I had never approached before.This has had a deep impact on me; anyone of such virtues as honor, love and coolness will appreciate The Fountain.
If you want a movie that makes you think and question life, death, and the journey for solace days after seeing it, then go see The Fountain.
Darren, in this movie was able to touch the feeling of everybody who was open minded enough to look at film-making in different way!
Because it's really very inspiring and touching.I'm learning film-making now, and I've watched this movie 3 times so far.
I find 2001 and Tree of Life perplexing movies, and like The Fountain they are not movies for everybody but I think important films.
There will be some people who will finish the movie trying to figure out what it all means, others like me will be rewarded by its effective scenes and ambitious themes.
Scenes such as Jackman trying to find a cure for his wife's cancer, saving the Spanish queen from destruction by searching for the Fountain of Youth and sitting like Buddha beneath his cosmic tree really stand out, and the film does much with the ambitious and difficult-to-define themes of life, death, love and immortality.The performances are excellent, with both Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz giving some of their best work of their careers here.
One of the most beautiful films about love and life I have ever seen.