The Fountain

Lisa and I watched "The Fountain" on DVD over the weekend. We wanted to see it when it was in theaters, but couldn't manage to work out baby-sitting, and then the film bombed and vanished as quickly as it'd come. Unlike most of the SF fandom community, we were underwhelmed by Darren Aronofsky's earlier film, "Pi." I thought it stylish but incoherent, discordant to the point of distraction. Still, "The Fountain" looked interesting, and I'd heard all about its tortured history with Brad Pitt dropping out and budget problems and whatnot.

First of all, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why this film flopped. It's difficult to follow--skipping among three different story lines--and doesn't spoon-feed the viewer anything. I'm not even certain Aronofsky knows the "why" of most of the film, but instead chose to craft his narrative around an irrational mystery. That's cool by me. In a simple world, the three storylines set in different eras would tell different episodes in the life of a man and a woman who'd drunk from the Tree of Life, aka the Fountain of Youth. Which is, in essence, what the film is. Except that in each life (or at least some of them) the protagonists' lives are finite, and there's no indication that reincarnation is a reality in this film. Essentially, the far future era shares a great deal of continuity with the earlier eras, but each of the earlier eras share progressively less continuity with those that come after. The film screws with your mind that way. I was probably as well-prepared for this film as anyone could be, since I'd read so much Moorcock in my younger days where continuity is pretty much irrelevant. This could pass as a Moorcock film in many ways, except I've never seen Moorcock write anything so sentimental.

All in all, a beautiful, trippy, surreal cinematic effort that desperately wants to be this century's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It compares favorably to the Russian version of Solaris and is more accessible than either of those films from way back when, so ultimately I have to say the film succeeds on its own terms. Recommended, just don't expect a popcorn flick.

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