THE FOUNTAIN - FILMSTRUCK

This review was originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2007.

Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain was barely a blip in theatres during its release last year. A willfully challenging art-house picture with the shine and substance of a sci-fi brainteaser, it was a conundrum to some, a yawner to others, and a revelation to many. It's the kind of movie that was made to be debated and argued over, defended and loathed in equal measures.

I missed it at my Cineplex, instead catching it on a transatlantic flight. Not exactly the most ideal of situations to watch a film, particularly one as beautifully shot as The Fountain, but even viewing it on a tiny picture screen on the back of someone else's chair could not dull Aronofsky's fervor. I was instantly enthralled, joining the "loved it" camp without reservation. This was a surprise to me, because I wasn't necessarily predisposed to like it, having mixed feelings about both of Aronofsky's previous efforts, Pi and Requiem for a Dream. It was as if I had been sleeping, unwilling to believe, and The Fountain struck me both intellectually and emotionally, hitting with the force of an awakening slap. The Fountain is a passionate movie, and it moves with the inconstant waves of human feeling. For as much as it tickles the philosophical centers of the viewer's brain, if you try to intellectualize it too much, you'll lose it. You just have to let it happen and accept the irrational flow.  The Fountain is about grief, about life and death, about sacrifice and the act of creation through reduction. Don't try to force the pieces together; the movie will assemble the puzzle for you.

Darren Aronofsky's script, written from a story conceived with Ari Handel, runs on three separate but intersecting timelines. The main line is in the present, where Dr. Tommy Creo (Hugh Jackman) is searching for a cure for cancer. He is driven and obsessed, determined to outrun the tumors that threaten to take his beloved wife away from him. For her part, Izzy (Rachel Weisz), indulges his dream. She yearns to spend more time with her husband, but she understands his compulsion. As a writer, she is trying to solve her own riddles about death. Her work-in-progress is a book called The Fountain, a period piece about a Spanish conquistador named Tomas (Jackman, again) searching for a Mayan temple believed to hold the Tree of Life from the Garden of Eden, which is, essentially, the Fountain of Youth. Tomas was sent on the mission by Queen Isabela (Weisz), who seeks eternal life for herself and her kingdom. Adding a perilous deadline to Tomas' expedition is the Inquisitor (Stephen McHattie, 300 [review]), a power-mad zealot who is spreading through Spanish society like the cancer that attacks Izzy. He'd have Isabela killed if it meant taking the throne himself.

We see the Spanish storyline played out as Tommy reads the manuscript, its narrative intertwining with his scientific mission. Izzy explains to him the various Mayan creation and afterlife myths she's uncovered in her research, and it inspires Tommy to seek different techniques. All the while, the third timeline, the future, runs its own course over the top of both of the other stories. This story is the most open to debate, possibly being another part of the book, but also possibly more connected to Tommy's consciousness.

In this future, Jackman plays a monastic caretaker for a tree that grows at the center of a star, its similarity to both the Tree of Life and the star that the Mayan's believe houses their souls after they die being immediately apparent. From where I sit, this symbolic plotline is a manifestation of Tommy's thoughts, of his inspiration and his guilt. The answers he seeks (and make no mistake, the questions change, it's not as simple as all that) lie in somehow connecting this future story to the rest, steering the star to the Mayan temple and Izzy's hospital bed and not necessarily halting death, but at least finding some kind of understanding.

A synopsis of The Fountain reads like a recipe for something pretentious and self-important. In Aronofsky's kitchen, the movie is a delicate soufflé. All it would take is a loud rejection from his viewer to make it collapse on itself. Note that I put the survival of the picture in the audience's hands. It's because I think the director has given us all the pieces, all of the information we need to connect everything in his tale. He's perfectly in control of a rather unwieldy narrative, and he gingerly leads his audience from one element to the next. He makes the interweaving of the three lines apparent through repetition of events and dialogue, but he also uses visual rhymes to add resonance. For instance, as both Tommy and Tomas head off on their quest to save their beloved, they enter the shot upside down and exit right-side up, or the hairs on the back of Izzy's neck resemble the living filaments on the tree within the star; there is also similar framing used on the various characters, recurring images of rings and spheres, and design motifs that echo, such as the Mayan dagger and the screen in front of Isabela, brain scans and nebula patterns, and the jewelry worn by Isabela and Izzy.

The art direction in The Fountain is meticulously gorgeous. Aronofsky insisted on hand-crafted, live effects wherever possible, and the end product is more lush than any big-budget CGI-fest. More important than the visual details, though, is the heart that pumps the blood through this picture. Aronofsky never loses sight of the emotional impact that keeps The Fountain from being just an empty mind-bender that's more satisfying to look at than it is to watch. Here is where casting is oh so important. Hugh Jackman had already had a hell of a year with a comedic performance in Scoop [review] and playing the conflicted hero (villain?) in The Prestige [review], and his turn as the lead in The Fountain adds an even greater mark to his resume. He's never had so much passion onscreen, and as bright as his fire burns when he chases the various relics of his quest, the explosion of despair that follows tears everything down and razes the emotional landscape. You'd be forgiven for thinking that nothing more can grow there, but Aronofsky and Jackman still have a few surprises up their sleeves.

Of course, no obsession is complete without its central, driving object, and Weisz is resplendent as the muse. Izzy/Isabel is the less showy role. As much as she is the inspiration that pushes the explorers to action, she is also the finish line. She already knows what they will find, and she is required to provide both sympathy and encouragement even as she disintegrates. Rachel Weisz is more than emotionally able as an actress, and I have no trouble buying that she could be the catalyst for world-spanning expeditions and sleepless nights in search of salvation.

Needless to say, I loved The Fountain. Every defiant, arty minute of it. It took about six years for Aronofsky to bring the film to life, and even the crushing blow of one production being shut down just as it was getting started couldn't stop him. Just like the character in his script, he wasn't going to let anything prevent him from pursuing his journey all the way to the end. I'd say I'd like to know how that felt, what kind of buzz he achieved by fulfilling that dream, but it's all right here  in the final scenes of the movie. The rush of innovation, the joy of understanding, the contentment of spiritual nirvana--author and creation are, for once, occupying the same space. Tommy's fictional discovery is Aronofsky's artistic discovery playing on an endless loop, growing exponentially with each play, like a chain reaction of supernovas. Like the Fountain the characters all seek, The Fountain is Aronofsky's source of eternal life--a motion picture that will endure.

SELECTED SHORTS VI - CRITERION CHANNEL

With Filmstruck shutting down, I thought I’d squeeze in one last shorts column. If there is a way to resurrect it at a later date, naturally, I will, but without the Criterion Channel, the label doesn’t really have any other venue to showcase random short films--I guess unless I just watch ones that are bonus features on their discs, reviewing them separately from the main feature. I’m sad to see Filmstruck go. It was fun while it lasted. While I imagine that the Criterion Channel will get resurrected again, hopefully with the same level of curation, I doubt we will get another one-two punch of also having the added bonus of the Turner Classics library.

You can read the previous columns here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

My Josephine (2003; USA; 7 minutes): Moonlight-director Barry Jenkins creates a collage-like narrative about two Arab immigrants running a laundromat. The man is in love with the woman, whom he compares to Napoleon’s first wife, and he ponders the nature of devotion, longing, and assimilation. It all works on a symbolic level, expressing their joint--and disjointed--experience through suggestion and metaphor, and yet is also effective as simple drama.

Bath House (2014; Sweden 15 minutes): I’ve reviewed a couple of films by Niki Lindroth von Bahr in previous installments, but this is by far the one with the most coherent plot. Featuring the director’s usual stop-motion style, it portrays a public pool where several animal characters intersect: the horse who is working at the bath house, a gay feline couple who go their to swim, and a trio of bunnies looking to rob the place. Things go wrong for each outing, leaving all six critters stranded on the street, unable to swim, as the pool itself starts to disintegrate.

Less surreal and abstract than Tord and Tord or The Burden, Bath House manages a quiet humanity, finding intrigue in everyday life, suggesting individual conflict through tiny actions. It’s also charming to look at.

Incident By A Bank (2010; Sweden; 13 minutes): This short by Ruben Olstund, the director of Force Majeure and The Square, is an impressive piece of film choreography. Shot in one continuous take, it captures two inept bank robbers trying to pull a heist, but from the vantage of a non-participatory observer. Remaining outside the bank, the camera probes the street, looking for action and reaction, as bystanders comment on the events, jump into the fray, or even move through the scene oblivious to what is really going on. It’s all rather fascinating both in execution and in drama, putting us in the position to judge the voyeurs who do nothing--while literally doing nothing ourselves.

The Horse in Focus (1956; Sweden; 17 minutes): Staying in Sweden to dip into the Criterion 100 Years of Olympic Films collection, this colorful documentary is both quaint and erudite, kind of exactly the sort of thing you imagined a couple of years back when Mitt Romney was made fun of for participating in “dressage.”

The star here is the commentator rather than the performers, with his clear bias for his home country and flashes of dry wit, tossing zingers at riders when they make errors. There is little suspense in the proceedings, particularly as much is left on the cutting room floor and often the commentary jumps ahead to tell us what happens next. But what makes The Horse in Focus interesting is how it approaches the athletes, with neither the horse nor the rider really given any prime attention. Rather, they are a unit, rising and falling, quite literally, together.

An Act of Love (2018; Australia; 11 minutes): Writer/director Lucy Knox packs a lot into a very short time. A pair of identical twin black girls has their afternoon out at the mall swerve from light-hearted fun to a deep interpersonal drama, testing their sibling bond. When a capricious older boy decides to separate them by turning his flirtatious attention on one sister, leaving the other behind, it stirs up a variety of conflicting emotions in both girls, ultimately requiring a drastic measure of solidarity to repair the damage. In all of this lingers questions of identity and an outcry against the extensive damage of casual racism and misogyny. Knox’s narrative is minimal, but her meaning complex.

Night Mayor (2009; Canada; 14 minutes): The auteur Guy Maddin is up to his usual visual tricks in this black-and-white film evoking 1930s sci-fi and horror. A Croatian immigrant sets out to convert the aurora borealis into music, but his efforts succeed far beyond his imagination, going beyond simple melody and instead broadcasting evocative images across Canada’s phone lines. Though he believes he has tapped into something that shows his fellow Canadians glimpses of themselves and their own national character, there is an underlying menace to his invention, particularly in how he exploits his family.

Night Mayor is an evocative mood piece, with Jason Staczek’s avant-garde music doing a lot of heavy lifting to make the titular pun a cinematic reality. (Say it out loud a couple of times, you’ll get it.)

Home (2016; England; 20 minutes): Is there more going on here than I am seeing? From what I can surmise, Daniel Mulloy is executing a simple reversal technique, showing us the struggle of European refugees by making the focus a middle-class British family trying to get through a war zone. Or is it that they are getting into one, rather than escaping to safety? No matter, the approach is so straightforward, Home is wholly ineffective. It only succeeds in shining a light on the actuality of white privilege: if you need to recognize the skin and accent as similar to your own in order to empathize with such tragic situations, then you’re as shallow as this film.

Swallowed (2016; USA; 17 minutes): Lily Baldwin pulls triple duty here as writer, director, and star, creating for herself a trippy yet ultimately baffling horror film. Centering on a young mother who begins to have bizarre hallucinations while breastfeeding her child, this short quickly descends into a lot of surreal nonsense, a couple of special effects away from being body horror, but never quite settling into any clear realm of meaning. My guess was that this had something to do with food anxieties, particularly that of women, who are expected to not just give of their bodies, but in more traditional (read: outdated) scenarios, to also cook for everyone. In that, Swallowed finds little victory. Baldwin’s perception of reactions others have to her food--dancing, writhing, convulsing--look like parodies of cliché acting exercises. “Pick an animal and pretend to be that animal vomiting.” Swallowed is like someone saw the last reels of Darren Aronofsky’s mother! and failed to realize he spent a good 45 minutes setting everything up.

Reading the official description of the film, though, it appears that Swallowed is not about any of that, but more about the feelings its main character tamps down, Marge Simpson-style, in order to maintain a brave face. More telling than even that, however, is the fact that the screenplay was based on someone’s dream, proving once again that dreams are boring when they aren’t (a) either contrived to fit into some narrative and thus don’t reflect real dreams at all (see 99% of all movies with dream sequences) or (b) lacking the personal interest that allows one to either be fascinated by what they don’t understand or somehow decode it. Thinking about it, though, the only thing that might be worse than watching Swallowed would be listening to the dreamer/director try to explain it. Whatever the code, continue to keep it to yourself.

FOLLOWING (Blu-Ray) - #638

An unnamed "young man" sits in front of a police officer and tells his story. It's a knotted tale, one that jumps through time, features inconsistencies, and arguably, from a narrative standpoint, if he really is a first-person narrator, includes scenes he couldn't possibly be privy to, not without toppling the house of cards he doesn't realize he's trapped in. But for the sake of this review, we'll pretend I'm not a stickler for such things. Plus, I basically liked Following, Christopher Nolan's 1999 debut, so why get hung up on its main cheat?

The accused (played by Jeremy Theobald) is an unemployed would-be writer who has a hobby: he picks random people in a crowd and follows them to see where they go and what they do. Though he begins this practice by establishing a rigorous routine--namely, you only follow someone once, and then you move on--after a while, he begins to repeat certain targets. One of these repeat customers, a well-dressed gentleman named Cobb (Alex Haw), notices he is being tailed and introduces himself in a diner. Turns out, Cobb's a petty thief, and like his shadow, he has his own unique way of doing things. Cobb takes the guy along and shows him the routine. He likes his burglaries to be an interruption in the life of the victim. He takes things he can carry, like compact discs, but his main goal isn't profit, but rather to make the burglarized realize they have been messed with. He likes to up-end their personal items, to spread them around, to shake the flat owner's sense of security.

As we witness this training scenario, Nolan--who wrote, edited, and shot Following, in addition to directing--gives us glimpses of the future before the young man got pinched. He got involved with a woman (Lucy Russell) that he and Cobb robbed, and starts to be sucked into her world. She is a former gangster's moll who has reason to fear her ex. At some point, the young man also got beat up, and the reason why is part of the mystery.

Anyone who is familiar with Nolan's non-Batman films, such as Memento and Inception [review], know that the director has a penchant for jumbled narratives that bend back on themselves and keep the audience guessing all the way through the movie. Following is the early blueprint for this technique, and so digging too far into the plot will only serve to unravel it for the first-time viewer. At the same time, there's also not much here to unravel. The plot, when presented on its face, is not all that complicated (though if you get confused, I guess you can watch the version put in the correct chronological order that's included on this Blu-Ray). One or two cards are held to the vest up until the very end, but Nolan isn't pulling that big of a sleight of hand. The truth behind much of the scheme is exposed about mid-way through.

In all honesty, Following has really benefitted from what the director has gone on to do next. In many ways, it is not unlike Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket [review], Paul Thomas Anderson's Hard Eight, or particularly Darren Aronofsky's Pi in that it is quite literally a low-budget test, a warm-up of all that is to come. Regardless of your particular affection for any of these films, they are all the least interesting of the individual auteur's oeuvre. Following is an entertaining crime yarn, and Nolan squeezes every penny out of his meager budget, but were this not a movie by the director of The Dark Knight [review] or The Prestige [review], there's a good chance none of us would be talking about it right now. To call the characters underdeveloped would be an understatement. Even for an exercise in genre such as this, where a writer can get away with just showing types, these guy are particularly flat, doing little more than servicing the concept (which is good enough to make this cinematic caper come off, regardless). There also aren't enough pieces here where I think repeat viewings will reveal all that much more than you might have gotten the first time. If one were to do an infographic illustrating the plot, it would probably be one-tenth of one percent of the size of Inception's.

That said, for the undistinguished kid brother of the Nolan filmography, Following gets the full red carpet treatment from Criterion. The high-def transfer looks amazing. I really dig seeing black-and-white films on Blu-Ray, and Following's gritty cinematography looks even grittier in 1080p. Fans of Nolan (of which I consider myself one) will also appreciate the inclusion of his short college film, Doodlebug, made two years before the main feature and also starring Theobald. Though a scant three minutes long, it's a well-executed concept, simple and to the point, with a clever punch line.

Please note: The images used here were taken from promotional materials and other sources, not directly from the Blu-Ray.