The Fountain - Darren Aronofsky - release Nov. 22, 2006

This was a great piece of art work in motion, and certainly a great story, but it was not a cinematic masterpiece. Art meets science fiction meets Darren Aronofsky meets real science through the eyes of the microscopic special effects. Nice. But is the North American crowd ready for art alone to stand? And also, I believe that Darren, still a growing director, has not shown us maturity in this piece for the simple fact that he does not trust his own work yet. His reliance upon repetitiveness was taken as style in Requiem, but in this piece I saw it as tedium and unnecessary. I’m not sure of what everyone else thought, but I “got it” early on and connected his dots, and did not need the many consistent reminders. The dots I did not connect were purposeful on his part, and well done. I'll explain that a little later in this article.

Darren has a fascination with symbolism in all of his work so far. This one was cinematically straightforward and powerful. All of the themes were central, circular, rotational, and consistent. One cannot deny the visually adept eye of Darren’s cinema awareness and his ability to craft an almost totally visual story. You could easily make a hundred or more wall-hangings from this work suitable for framing. Candles and deep black were abounding, and rich textures reminiscent of Rembrandt. Kudos to the furniture, costume, and lighting people. Huge accolades to the Cinematographer. This one could be up for set and wardrobe Oscar.

I’ve just sat through a vision that is quite beautiful, and certainly metaphysically complete. While the vision that I’m left with is of Buddhist completion, circles within circles, it lends credence and understanding to the Christian bedrock story of the Tree of Life as well. Brining it home, Aronofsky leaves us with reality, and dealing with death, and the promise of life. This giant allegory draws upon both traditions to simply illustrate the holistic principle of life from death, and the relinquishing of life has never been so visually stunning. This was a great offering from the standpoint of art and it’s ability to bring about the heightened awareness of spirituality without actually saying a word. And speaking of words, there were indeed very few. The lush visuals did all the talking. Ultimately we are left with hope and promise, and the vision of life beyond where we live. The fearless face of beauty and love squares against strife and anxiety and the face of science and our machinations against the reality of death. The winner is life, but on it’s own terms, God’s terms.

The ultimate failure of the tree, even at the end, I believe was not necessarily the failure of the story of the Garden of Eden’s Tree of Life, but rather the ultimate subjugation of the human story to that of death, and re-birth in another life. The Doctor’s strivings prove to be fruitless. His striving to find the source, just like that of the Spanish conquistador, and his ultimate acceptance, to “finish it”, to write that 12th chapter, was a transcendence that we all must face. Flowers do indeed grow from the ground. “Unless a seed fall into the ground and die it cannot produce fruit”.

The final scene of the star was reminiscent of the final scene in the film Brainstorm, which also took the partaker of that vision, in that case Christopher Walken, into the world of the eternal and was like the enfolding of eternal space upon space, a never-ending light and folds of light. This beautiful and yet limited vision of the eternal is about as descriptive as cinema can get visually, metaphorically. But because of the somewhat overdriven visuals I was left with the same effect that Big Fish had upon me; I knew it was fake, but I loved it anyway. And I stayed with the story because of the illustrations’ strength.

Yet there was much to be desired in regard to the story. I am putting pieces together in the aftermath. During the first viewing I wanted to know more about the future hero and his world. I wanted to know where that bubble starship came from. I wanted to see the background of just how that ship was created, and where he got the tree of life from, and how it was that he knew to take it to the galaxy. Was he indeed the year 2000 man, still alive? It turns out he had the original and faded tattoo, and the place where the ring was prior to it’s theft. That did not become completely clear until the end. The now extremely fragile-looking and worn pen that he used spoke of the years, and so I’m assuming that he was the original Dr. that did surgery on monkeys. And so Darren is here attempting to draw us on with the suspense and the fairly thin line of mystery about this future space traveler. That was actually a good ploy. It worked.

It does work, however I think it might have been fine, would have helped somewhat, to just simply show the context of that world to some degree, to see an origin of that time. Maybe just a shot of his preparation and takeoff from planet earth with the tree in partial bloom, and other people of similar nature watching him go, a larger-scaled vision of the world of 2600 that he finally comes to live in. And if indeed he was the inheritor of that tree, just how was it that only he could take it off-world and to it’s origin? There are many questions that never get answered. Those details don’t really need to be in the film itself. But the answers to these puzzles, indeed some of the questions do not come until reflection later. This is a great reflective piece, and may be lost on some younger audiences without sufficient background to understand either religion, death, cancer, experience with love, or other more mature themes.

I’d say for all of the above reasons while the story was certainly well-rounded, was succinct, it lacked scope (not depth – it’s plenty deep), but was also a visual feast worth seeing for it’s beauty and poetic, lyrical vibrancy.