The Fountain

Get teaser-trailer here.

Darren Aronofsky. Darren Aro-nof-sky. Aronofsky, the writer and director of Pi and Requiem for a Dream (along with Hubert Selby Jr.) seems to be broadening his directorial horizon with his new film, The Fountain. In my opinion, it seems that unlike his previous heroes' tales, we now have a truly captivating love story laden in symbolism. Instead of sticking a drill in the side of his head, he will challenge "the city" and save his love. Instead of stealing his mom’s television for dough, he will ride towards danger to save "that girl" from The Mummy Returns. It is a Hollywood type of film by a creative talent, not one of Adam Sandler’s dorm buddies or John "I use many white doves in dramatic scenes" Woo.



The film will certainly have a somber tone since it is essentially a meditation on coming to terms with death. And it’s interesting that no one has made a movie about the Genesis story of the Tree of Life, one of our oldest myths (as tree people, of course). I wonder why that hasn’t happened. This seems like an epic love story to rival Jumpin' Jack Flash and Ernest Actually Doesn’t Have Chlamydia, He Has Aids and the teaser is pretty enticing – and unlike his other films in the low millions, this was originally budgeted as a $90 million movie starring Brad Pitt. Now it is $30 million range and seems better without Brad.



But what is it about? One certainly can’t glean any impression from the teaser besides “ohhhhh! neat sparks!” so here it goes: The Fountain is an odyssey about one man's thousand-year struggle to save the woman he loves. His epic journey begins in 16th century Spain, where conquistador Tomas Creo commences his search for the Tree of Life, the legendary entity believed to grant eternal life to those who drink of its sap.

Will there be murder and love making? Erm, heck yes! Lets discuss the trailer.

It’s rife with parallels; you could show a retarded monkey the trailer and he’d chirp that. We see Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz’s characters span ten centuries (16th century, 21st century and 26th century – hence the always-uplifting apocalyptic images in space). What affects me so much about the trailer is the tempo, spurred on by the insane, but simple drumming. It’s also a trailer set in images of 3s. If you’ll notice, every set of clips that is interrupted by the written notes (“1 Man” “1 Love,” etc.) is comprised of 3 “trailer moments” from the film. Three is uber symbolic: trinity, one-ness, three denotes divine perfection, yada, yada, yada. Aronofsky is a brilliant filmmaker and we have to assume this symbolism goes beyond the pure aesthetic. It’s relatively simple, but in the normal, sort of boring images of our modern society, there is intense beauty and that culminates in the last shot of what I presume to be Hugh Jackman floating in the electric liquid – certainly the Fountain of Life. There isn’t a lot there, but it keeps me wanting more. Who knows, maybe Wolverine will get the girl, live forever and save the day. Or maybe he will realize life is fragile and that we should drink up what we have, and enjoy our friends and love our true loves, bitches.