Film Review: Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain

‘Death is the road to awe’ a Mayan priest whispers at the summit of a great pyramid. The last man, struggling to sustain his only companion, a dying tree of life, voyages through space in a bubble. A star fades, wrapped in the death-lock of a nebula.

These are moments which punctuate visionary feast The Fountain. Darren Aronofsky’s third feature film sits firmly among the writer/director’s greats, including Requiem for a Dream , The Wrestler and Black Swan. However it is little known and wildly overlooked, with takings of half its $35 million budget and critics sneering left right and centre. Ultimately this is a great cinematic tragedy - it really is a work of consummate beauty, a -see-before-you-die deal.

Often described as a tri-narrative tale, the film explores three parallel stories from the past, present and future. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz play the central protagonists in each narrative: a conquistador hunting the Tree of Life for his Queen to the historical backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition; and a space man, Tom (a homage to no less than Bowie’s Major Tom) the Last Man, seeking salvation in the collapse of a star. But the central story is that of Tommy and Izzi, a modern day couple whose lives are haunted by her terminal cancer. Although originally startling in the sense that we are not often confronted with this sort of narrative, it’s refreshing, and as the story unfolds the connections and parallelisms create a combined message.  Izzi and Tommy’s tale permeates and encompasses the film, with Tommy’s memories of Izzi projected within Tom’s storyline, and the plot of the conquistador and Queen being a story Izzi has written for Tommy to help come to terms with her death. Although the fragmentary and ambitious non-linearity of The Fountain is indeed as disorienting to watch as it is to describe, they each run with parallel themes and are inter-connected through graphic-match editing, aesthetic motifs and ecclesiastical iconography.

The message this film emanates is encapsulated in the words of the Mayan Priest. Death is the road to awe. Aronofsky’s work is profoundly focused on the idea perhaps more basely referred to in The Lion King as the circle of life: death is a natural process, one we all must face. This idea blooms throughout the film as Tommy, after a struggle as a neuroscientist to prevent his wife’s death, fails and gradually becomes at peace with himself. The conquistador, on discovering the tree of life finds he has interpreted its powers erroneously – rather than raising him to immortality as a man he meets a different fate. And Tom reaches Xibalba and witnesses, as Izzi has reiterated earlier in the film, that the most exquisite death of a star creates new life.

The Fountain is at times bleak, dealing with raw human emotion and universal experience. Centrally the film focuses on death and mankind’s relationship with our mortality. At some point, everyone has to consider and accept the fact that they will die; while this is agonizing for Tommy who insists ‘death is a disease’ to be cured, Izzi embraces the life she has left. This is the mastery of Aronofsky’s film: its immeasurable scale – narratives scattered across time and space, enormous life questions – is countered by its intimacy. The storyline is surprisingly uncluttered with the aforementioned strand of Tommy and Izzi dominating screentime, undiluted by other characters. Extreme close-ups physically enhance this immediacy, with almost intrusive zoom on the face, lips and neck involving the audience in their relationship.

Stylistically as ever Darren Aronofsky pays intricate attention to detail. Izzi is - without exception – dressed in white throughout the film, a dramatic contrast with Tommy who is shot in dark, low-key lighting and black costumes. Aronofsky plays with this chiaroscuro throughout, particularly in a bath sequence in which Izzi is the brightly lit central focus of the shot; Tommy lingers on the sidelines, in darkness, a visual expression of the regressive nature of his attitude to death.

A reflection of the film’s limited budget (for Hollywood standards), Aronofsky as ever uses creative techniques to replace expensive CGI. The shots of Xibalba – the Mayan underworld - as the spaceman hurtles into the dying star are in fact the work of macro-photography of undersea micro-organisms. The use of the infinitely miniscule to represent the infinitely colossal is an exquisite, inspired idea which in this context not only works but has deeply philosophical implications.

The double act of Weisz and Jackman is remarkable. Both performances are beautifully convincing and, accomplished with the aforementioned intimate cinematography and poignant screenwriting from Aronofsky, the bittersweet nature of their parting is all the more severely felt, as if it were a direct blow to the viewer as well as the characters onscreen. Indeed, the film encapsulates the agonizing hopelessness which accompanies loss. Tommy’s frustration at his inability to save his wife is deeply relatable, a heart-heaver. Jackman’s performance is particularly distinguished as Tommy strives in desperation to achieve the unattainable and cure death. His pain is that of every person as it is an innately human response to riot against the ending of our lives, or that of our loved ones.

An adventure across spirituality of all planes – Christianity, Buddism, Mayan – but also in science, philosophy, The Fountain manifests the human urge to gaze at the sublime, to wonder. Head on it might be a tale of darkness and morbidity, but ultimately The Fountain urges us to celebrate the life we have rather than fight the inevitability of death. 


Originally published in No-Wave Magazine.