The Fountain

this blog hasn't delved much into the personal, being largely a grumpy pisstake on the many idiots I encounter during the day. I have feeling this post may delve a bit deeper than normal, so if you'll permit the indulgence.

Firstly a brief statement on my state of mind: I got to the point this afternoon where if I read another word the shaking would probably turn feral and dribbly. I was still enjoying the act of the ink sliding delicately across the paper, leaving its light blue trail with the distinctive odour that fountain pens and ink have. But the reading, the editing, they'd gotten to me. So I thought a movie, that's the ticket. Helped by seeing that Paramount were offering $8 tix for students.

So I caught the latest Darren Aronofsky movie, The Fountain. I loved Pi, so was looking forward to this having heard good things. As the review continues you'll discover why I possibly should have read the reviews a bit more closely.

It is said of great art that it can move you, I've always included movies in that category. And I would put this movie there - with the proviso that some people may find it a bunch of pretentious wank. That being said, here's my review.

The storyline is roughly: girl dying of inoperable brain tumour and husband (tommy) a research scientist who is trying out compounds to shrink brain tumours. He stumbles on a compound from some obscure South American tree that causes a monkey to get a new lease on life. At roughly the same time he watches his wife die. If that wasn't close enough to the bone, it helps if you know one of my genes I work on in addition to being sex determining is also the major nephrology development gene. Interspersed with all of that are cuts to a garden of eden type situation with a tree that gives eternal life, and Tommy sups from the tree while trying to find the solution to the tumour. There is a subplot concerning the Spanish Queen who is being hounded by the inquisition and sends her Conquistador to New Spain to find this tree. This plot it is later revealed, is the book 'the Fountain' that Tommy's wife is writing.

There's some beautiful imagery used for that, the term 'cosmic opera' gets bandied around too much, but in this case it's apt. It's beautifully shot, the writing is tight, the acting wonderful and the cosmic scenes surreal. What sets it apart for me, was the perfection of the character writing. Last year I heard exactly the same lines, and felt the same pull to the lab to finish what I was working on. My responses were similar to Tommy's and the response to the frustration of being unable to fix something in front of me was also similar.
The religious, or at least spiritual for they don't really fit into any specific religion, although the movie does open with a quote from Genesis (no not the prog band...) aspects are interesting. It seemed to me to be more of a it's a vast world out there, why can't there be something else. There was no evidence to say that it was external, indeed although the imagery was 'space' with nebula's, given the subtext of a brain tumour, it also fits nicely that the nirvana was internalised within the brain.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. The music is wonderful, an interesting mix of vaguely new-age but with enough rock in there to lift it above that rather dire genre. But it was really the way all of the pieces worked, the music, the story, the characters, and the directors vision. Think of it like a tighter, better version of the Holy Mountain.

As Grizzled Doggy said, I'd like lots of people to see this movie. I particularly want to see if again when I'm in a more 'normal' state so I can find out a) if its as good as I thought (which I suspect it is) and b) if it moves me as much as it did. The only other time I've been that moved by a movie was the death scene in Wah-wah, which I saw in late June last year. In fact I saw Wah-wah twice and both times it cut me up. I suspect next time I see The Fountain the same thing will happen.

I am wondering how other fans of Aronovsky found this movie for it struck me that it could be similar to the response of fans of Pain of Salvation to their opus 'Be' after the heavy-rock focus of 'Remedy Lane'.


B.