The storyline behind the new film “”The Fountain”” – about one man’s battle to save his beloved, spanning the course of a thousand years – sounds like a missing legend from one of Homer’s epics. Indeed, “”The Fountain”” has all the ingredients of a potential classic: an award-winning cast, stunning visual effects and an acclaimed director. Perhaps that is what makes the film’s unexpected downfall so vastly disappointing.
The movie opens hundreds of years into the future in a bubble-like spaceship where Tom Creo (played by a bald Hugh Jackman, looking like a slim Buddha) is desperately in search of a dying star, which he believes contains the soul of his dead wife Izzy (Rachel Weisz). However, he is so tortured by past memories that his sense of time fractures – his past, present and future colliding so often that his flashbacks tend to repeat themselves.
In the present, Tommy is a gifted scientist obsessed with finding the cure for Izzy’s terminal brain tumor. He spends his days cooped up in his lab, mindless even of his own wife, at one point snapping at her when she invites him to walk with her in the snow. As her condition worsens, Izzy begs her husband to finish the last chapter of her novel, “”The Fountain,”” set in 16th-century Spain, which tells the story of a conquistador named Tomas (Jackman), who is also on a desperate quest to save his beloved queen (Weisz) – and consequently Spain itself – by hunting for the elusive fountain of youth.
“”The Fountain”” is a tearjerker – literally – since every single scene involves Jackman either tearing up or bawling uncontrollably, and he has such great range and emotional depth that he compels the audience to join him. The most heart-wrenching scene in the movie involves Tommy, sobbing with grief and pain, tattooing a pseudo wedding ring around his finger (in place of the real one he misplaced earlier in the movie) with the fountain pen his wife gifted him.
The film is both written and directed by Darren Aronofsky (“”Requiem for a Dream””), and his trademark techniques appearing in every shot. The scenes of the cosmos are especially spectacular, and shots of the tree of life and the Mayan temples are screensaver material. However, Aronosfsky’s visual effects soon become his double-edged sword, as he becomes so lost in the techniques that he forgets about the film itself.
Aronofsky attempts to make a profound movie about embracing death and the circle of life (and all that other good stuff “”The Lion King”” taught us much more effectively). “”Death is the path to awe,”” Izzy keeps repeating, because apparently she is the only person in the entire film who seems to experience this unshared revelation. But if this was meant to be the theme, Aronofsky has failed miserably, since this concept is never explored further. Although the movie’s buildup promises a satisfying resolution, the ending arrives so abruptly that the audience is left stunned and wondering if the film has truly ended, and what – if so – was the point of it all? The parallel storylines remain pointlessly suspended, never really coming together to a main point and instead maintaining an odd disconnect. The result is a frustrating disappointment of not only wasted potential, but wasted time.
“”The Fountain”” is a tragedy, all right. Too bad this applies to more than just the film’s genre.
