I like to watch movies; all sorts of movies, but by the end I would like to know what to movie was/is all about. Call me old-fashioned, but like my books I would like my movies to have some definition; i.e. a discernable beginning, middle, and end and ultimately be about more than visual effects. The Fountain (2006) did not deliver.

The Story

Written and Directed by a clearly unbalanced Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) The Fountain consists of three interconnected threads separated by oh, a few thousand years, give or take. All of the threads are tied together by a common theme, the mythical Fountain of Youth, and two seeming immortal characters bond together by love! How quaint!

In the first, thread, or story-line a Conquistador named Tomas (Hugh Jackman - Xmen, X2, The Prestige) is seeking the Fountain of Youth for the benefit and love of Spain's Queen Isabella I of Castile (Rachel Weisz - The Mummy, Stealing Beauty, The Constant Gardener), who is about the lose her crown to the Spanish Inquisition (a historical inaccuracy insofar as she started the Inquisition).

The second thread takes place in the here and now. This time Jackman is a doctor named Tommy and he seeking a cure for the terminal disease afflicting his wife Izzi (Weisz) by experimenting on primates. He has developed a drug from the bark of a mysterious tree.

In the third and final thread, set in the future, a bald Jackman, Tom Creo, floats through the universe in a translucent bubble reminiscent of a snow globe, in the company of a tree, the tree of life. And whilst in this globe he is able to mentally transport himself back and forth between the previous threads.

My Thoughts

Other than the constant of the characters and the tree, it is never made clear how these threads tie together to form a cohesive story. Aronofsky never really clarifies what we are seeing, or who or what the characters are, or what they are supposed to be accomplishing. We are just flung in the middle of a story with no discernable beginning, middle or end. The effect, far from evoking intellectual curiosity, instead imbibes one with a profound befuddlement as the film flashes from one time-line to the other with logical explanation.

And like most modern films, the darn trailer for The Fountain does a better job of laying out the basic premise of the movie than the movie itself; indeed it is not until we are two-thirds of the way through this rather colorful, but moribund movie that we given enough to make the light bright enough to see half of the meaning, and by that time, I had ceased to care!

And do not look to the end of the movie to bring one a sense of satisfaction. Having figured out some of what is going on, the movie leaves one with unanswered questions; e.g. did Tomas the Conquistador find the Fountain? And as my wife asked at the end: are he and Queen Isabella supposed to be immortal, living in the 21st century as husband and wife? Or are they reincarnations of their former selves from a previous time? And if immortal how then can she die of a very mortal ailment?

And how are Izzi and the Tree of Life/ Fountain of Youth tied together? And what were the references to Adam & Eve and the Tree of Knowledge meant to infer; that they-Tomas and Izzi-were the original Adam & Eve? So many questions and absolutely no answered from Aronofsky. It's almost as if he went to sleep in the middle of writing the screenplay, woke up and handed it in unfinished.

I give props to Jackman, Weisz and a suburb supporting cast, but they could do little to enliven the terminally ill script. Neither of the principle characters was drawn with enough depth or color to register in the mind as "old souls," so that the suggestion of perpetual love flowing as it were through the ages never jells with the intended mythic force.

The Fountain wanted desperately to tell a tale of human love and pain that is so deep and abiding that is took on a life of its own and spanned ages. Sadly, the story fails to take hold, and at times as I watched The Fountain it felt as if I were trapped in the glow bubble with Jackman floating through a very colorful, but ultimately cold and dismal universe forced to eat hairy tree bark for the rest of my life!
Skip The Fountain; what started out perhaps to be a journey into the spiritual realm turned out to be short trip into a scattered mind with little direction.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older