Review

Review Date: 26-November-06
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

The Fountain (2006)

The refreshment offered by Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain" isn't like a bracing belt of water which slakes your thirst; it's more like a cordial which slowly diffuses through your body. This is the definition of an art-house film: slow, philosophical, and a bit confusing, with religious, historical, and scientific images carrying a lot of weight. It isn't the type of thing to knock socks off the masses, but it may satisfy the patient moviegoer in a contemplative mood.

Much has been written about Aronofsky's long battle to get his fountain of youth epic to the screen (most of it likely purchased by the studio to generate buzz), but as one regards his final product it's the leading man who stands out above the filmmaker's vision. Playing a character whose life spans multiple centuries, Hugh Jackman bestows human warmth upon a picture that's visually sterile and cold. (Aronofsky, the artist behind "Pi" and "Requiem for a Dream," prefers to keep lighting to a minimum. Maybe it's a cost-saving measure.) Most of the movie involves Jackman as a modern-day doctor obsessed with finding a cure for cancer to save his beloved wife (Rachel Weisz). This segment ties in with another set during the Spanish Inquisition, where Jackman is a conquistador dispatched to the New World by Weisz's embattled queen to fetch a piece of the Tree of Life. These two quests lead to the third, futuristic part of the tale, which finds Jackman's doctor guiding himself and his wife's soul into space looking for immortality in the implosion of a star.

As with myriad fables and sci-fi works, "The Fountain" concludes that humans ought not to mess with the laws of nature. Death is a part of life which the wise person would accept, even as an apparent obstacle to love. (The obstacle is actually the denial of death.) This message and its gloomy delivery would not hit home without Jackman's honest portrayal of the incarnations of the struggling man. As the Spaniard he appears noble, dedicated, and blind, a seeker in an age of ignorance and rigid control. As the space traveler he injects raw emotion into a highly fanciful scene. And as the single-minded doctor, he breaks one's heart by caring for his wife both too much and not enough, or at least not in the most beneficial way. The characters he plays may be foolish to home in on everlasting life, but Aronofsky and his audience are fortunate to have Jackman as a point of focus. Through a shadowy labyrinth of thought and symbol, his feeling makes "The Fountain" worth finding.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.