Zachary FenellThe Fountain
January 7th 2009 19:01
The Fountain, 2006
If I used the words "visually stunning" or "soul-stirring", that would be trite and cliche. Really. It would. It says so right here in my "Ritin' Guude Fer Dummeez" book. Far be it for me to question such authority, so I'll have to come up with something different.
The Fountain, directed by Darren Aronofsky, stars Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz in one of the most
It's a movie that, unless you know what you're supposed to be relating to, you might just miss it. If you know what kinds of details to look for, you know what the real story is about.
WARNING: I'm about to get into slight spoiler territory, but it's for your own good.
This movie frequently gets lumped into the Science Fiction or Fantasy genre, and I've even seen some people call it Horror. Yes, there are some aspects that are a little bit... eh... dodgy for the weak-of-stomach, but it really has absolutely nothing to do with that. It's not a genre piece: It is purely and only about how two people cope with terminal illness and death.
Weisz displays such incredible strength in her character that I found myself wanting to be her if I ever found myself truly facing death like that. The whole story arc about the Spanish Queen and the Conquistador is not about any kind of historical event - which should be a relief for those who were grinding their teeth flat at various inaccuracies - but is a depiction of the story that she gifts her husband with during the course of the movie. She is the Queen, yes, being driven further and further away from what she loves the most (the world around her), and Jackman plays her husband, a doctor who is devoted to going anywhere and doing anything to save her (even traveling to mystical jungle temples if he thought it would help).
The aspect of the movie that shows Jackman shaved bald and meditating in the presence of a tree is an allegory for how we cope with grief and loss of this magnitude. He is stuck in this bubble because he cannot accept that there are things greater than himself, rhythms that supersede his own desires, and he stays there with the tree (his wife, even after death) until finally he reaches what the Buddhists call satori, a moment of true and real comprehension that allows him to surrender to the process and move beyond his grief into the rest of his life.
See? No historical drama, no science fiction - just a no-holds-barred tale of what true grief and loss feels like. We have become so jaded and desensitized to the idea of loss through mainstream media and entertainment that we forget that there is a very real and visceral process that goes on when it really happens to us. The Fountain attempts to give us a little peek into that so that we can invoke our compassion for others, and maybe even so that we will feel not quite so completely alone when we go through it ourselves.
Normally, I'd give it 5 stars straight-up, but the personal connection required makes it, as I said, a little inaccessible. It gets 4.5 Stars.
4.5 Stars
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