The Fountain is a gorgeous movie. Every shot in this film is a work of art. The film is loaded with allusions to Genesis and Mayan mythology which serve as poetic commentary on life, death and afterwards. A gold-colored nebula sacred to the Mayans plays an especially big role in the proceedings, as evidenced by its repeated use as a plot point and also by the rich golden hue that saturates so much of the cinematography. The references to astronomy also affect the visuals, most notably when we see the dazzling display of lanterns hung in a Spanish palace like so many stars in the sky. And there are dozens of other visual motifs that are every bit as powerfully beautiful and skillfully woven throughout the film. Additionally, Hugh Jackman is staggering to watch through every second of the film and he’s supported by an absolutely divine Rachel Weisz. Throw in a visionary editing job and an inventive sound design anchored by a wonderful Clint Mansell score and you’ve got yourself one superlatively crafted movie.
Damned if I have any idea what the story is about, though.
In this film, Hugh Jackman plays Tom Creo, a neurologist who’s obsessed with finding a cure for brain tumors before his wife, Izzy (Rachel Weisz) dies of such a tumor. This was straightforward enough to follow. Tommy becomes increasingly angry at and scared of the Reaper, even as his wife grows increasingly comfortable with her impending death. It’s a very relatable scenario, played out by two amazing actors in highly sympathetic roles. But then there’s the second storyline.
The movie simultaneously gives us the story of Tomas, a Spanish conquistador who’s also played by Hugh Jackman. The Spanish queen Isabel (Rachel Weisz again) charges him with finding the Tree of Life, with sap that bestows eternal youth, promising her hand in marriage as payment for his success. Out of loyalty for his country and love for his queen, Tomas charges forth with all-encompassing zeal. This man will find the Tree or he will die trying and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
In some different movie, either of these two stories individually might have made for good cinema. In this movie, the two are connected by the aforementioned recurring visual motifs, in addition to some shared camera tricks (my personal favorite is the shot of Tommy’s car that’s later mirrored by a shot of Tomas’ horse). Moreover, Izzy is close to finishing her book — titled “The Fountain” — which perfectly portrays the events of the Tomas storyline. She hands the book over to Tommy with the assignment of writing the last chapter, saying that he already knows it despite his claims to the contrary. Is the Tomas storyline just the book playing itself out in Tommy’s imagination? Were Tommy and Izzy the conquistador and queen in past lives? Maybe both?
All of this would be difficult enough, but we’ve also got a third storyline and I’ve got absolutely no fucking clue what it’s about. I can only say that some other character played by Hugh Jackman is floating around space in a bubble with some tree (presumably the Mayan Tree of Life) and trying to get it to the core of the aforementioned golden nebula. I don’t know who this character is and I don’t know how or why he’s on this cosmic journey. The imagery of the climax makes it look like the Tree was used to create a new Earth, but I’ve got absolutely no reason or evidence to support that conclusion.
The Wikipedia rundown says that this third Hugh Jackman character is an astronaut, traveling through space in the year 2500. I call bullshit. I know that technology can change a lot in 500 years, but the concept of space travel without any kind of fuel, computers or means of forward motion is patently ridiculous. Moreover, this guy doesn’t have any gear to protect him against the vacuum of space, choosing instead to dress like a Tibetan monk. I can only assume that this bubble (whatever the hell it’s made out of) is supposed to give all the protection, and I’ll bet it’s what gives the interior Earth-norm gravity as well.
But the kicker here is that this space monk has tattoos and objects that clearly belong to Tommy. Moreover, he seems to have crystal clear memories (hallucinations?) of Tommy’s life with Izzy and Tomas’ life with Isabel. Are all the male leads supposed to be the same person? Were Tommy and Tomas just past lives for the space guy? Are these cosmic travels just a figment of Tommy’s imagination? If so, how and why could he dream up something like this? There are just too many questions and none of this makes any sense.
It’s easy to see what Darren Aronofsky was going for here. He was clearly trying to make a deep thematic film about life and death, so crammed with story layers and visual symbols that it could be interpreted correctly in any number of ways. Another 2001: A Space Odyssey, if you will. The problem is that a little ambiguity goes a really long way. Even without the trippy ending of 2001, we still have a chilling tale of a space mission gone awry. The question of “Is Deckard a replicant?” — arguably the greatest hypothetical question in cinema history — is just a juicy philosophical cherry on top of a classic science fiction tale. Likewise, Watchmen (in both of its forms) is an amazing story that demands discussion primarily by implicitly asking the audience if Veidt’s actions were justified. And let’s not forget the question of whether or not that top fell at the end of Inception.
All it takes is one good question. One little subject for debate that serves as reflection on everything that came before it. The best kind of ambiguity is the kind about which you can talk with your friends and reach your own conclusions after the movie is done. Where ambiguity fails — as it does in this movie — is when multiple key actions, motivations and plot points are deliberately open to interpretation. At some point, we as an audience have to stand up and say to some overly vague auteur “Look, you’re the storyteller, you tell the story!”
To me, watching The Fountain was like watching a gorgeous Olympic-level long-distance runner on a treadmill. The speed, stamina, form and physical beauty on display would surely be exemplary, but that runner would still just be spending a lot of energy to go nowhere. The visuals in this movie are consistently amazing and our two lead actors are marvelous, but a good deal of the story is impenetrable and the ending is so incomprehensible that it could run for Congress. I have a great deal of respect for Darren Aronofsky as a filmmaker and auteur and I’ll be glad to hear anything he’s got to say through celluloid. I ask only that he doesn’t make me have to guess what that “anything” is.