The Fountain

By Daniel Johnson
Jul 13, 2007

In Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, Hugh Jackman plays three versions of the same soul. The first is Tomas, a 16th century conquistador on a mission to find the Tree of Life and, with it, save his country and queen. His relentless loyalty and refusal to accept any defeat, even imminent death, are themes he will stubbornly carry with him for more than a thousand years of rebirth. Of these we see Tommy, an oncologist obsessively trying to cure his wife's cancer through experimental research; and Tom, an astronaut hurtling solo through space toward the golden nebula where he believes the soul of his dead wife can be reborn. The superficial differences between their times and circumstances create a relief by which we see their sameness. It's not a story about eternal love as much as eternal persistence; a devotion to illusion so strong it distorts the truth and stunts acceptance.

Owing to a seismic performance by Jackson and an ornate, breathtaking special effects approach that uses manipulated macro photography in lieu of CGI, The Fountain will likely be to film what Siddhartha was to literature - the definitive western poetry for eastern mysticism. But outside of its spiritual overtones, it works simply as a piece of fantasy eye candy, with gilded visuals that are an end in themselves.

For all its abstractions, and a plot that ping-pongs seemingly carelessly through time, it has a linear story once you get your head around it. But these few plot strands are almost beside the point once the main character is revealed to be an abstraction of the self.

Though The Fountain is enjoying an after-the-fact buzz of web adoration, it was critically misunderstood and virtually ignored in its theatrical release. It's easy to see why the studio would have trouble promoting something so esoteric since the essence of movie promotion is the promise of something you've seen before (there is no marketing template for sci-fi Buddhist meditations that lure audiences with brand-name actors and then confuse the shit out of them). So it's ironic that a film about rebirth now seems certain to have a second life, as if it had to die at the box office to be reborn as a cult hit. (For evidence of the shift see metacritic.com where its composite score of critic reviews was 51, in contrast to its user reviews, which, buoyed by the DVD release, are up around 80.)

Masterpiece or not, it is a demanding first viewing, heavy on the mystical symbolism and light on the exposition. But that same symbolism is conveyed with such singularity and compressed articulation it transcends the whims of popular culture and rises to the level of spiritual edification. Whether or not it resonates with you will depend entirely on what you bring to the viewing.